Interview process at amo

amo is committed to an objective hiring process based on skills and qualifications. For this reason, we use structured interviews, an interview format that uses predetermined questions and a reliable rating scale. Structured interviews help us moderate interviewers' biases and give every candidate the same opportunity to succeed.

We want your time interviewing with amo to be as smooth and comfortable as possible. So we created this guide, which mostly focuses on engineering practices, but the overall structure is similar across all positions.

Interview Process

What to expect and how to prepare best for d-day!

Interview Overview

For most roles at amo, our process consists of four steps:

1. Initial screening
2. Technical screening
3. Exercise(s)
4. Onsite Interview

Below, you'll find a detailed breakdown for engineering positions:

1. Initial screening

Duration: 15-30 mins

During this initial chat, a recruiter will give you more details on the role and amo in general, get to know you better and describe the interview process. They'll assess your fit for the role by asking about your work experience, areas of expertise, motivation, and expectations for your next gig.

2. Technical screening

Duration: 50 mins

This is the very first round of technical interviews. It is composed of 3 steps:

• Technical Questions. Questions assessing general computer programming knowledge. These are basic questions against the speciality you are applying for.
• Leetcode-style Exercise. We want you to consider a technical problem and test your ability to come up with a robust and performant solution in code. We will be more interested in your approach to resolution than 100% compilation correctness.
• Candidate Questions. Your turn to ask us anything you want (more on the life of an Software Engineer at amo, the tech stack, upcoming challenges, etc.).

3. Live Coding Exercises

Duration: 1h each

We'll go deeper with three technical sessions, each focused on a different core skill:

• Concurrency & Design. In this step, we will focus on your understanding of concurrency problems in close to real-world components.
• Debug. We will provide you with a buggy project and assess your ability to read and debug code in an unfamiliar codebase, eventually providing a robust fix and corresponding non-regression tests.
• Data Structures. We will dive into concrete usage of common data structures and test your ability to come up with solutions using them efficiently.

These are remote live coding sessions. They don't need to happen back-to-back; we'll schedule them in a way that works best for both sides.

Technical screenings are conducted by an actual amo engineer and will happen remotely using coderpad.io for the coding part.

4. On-site Cultural Panel

Duration: 2 hours (1 interview + 1 lunch).

If the technical steps go well, we'll invite you to Paris for the final stage: an on-site cultural panel. This is your chance to meet more of the team, get a feel for our environment, and see how we fit together. This is your last step.

1. Career History. A non-technical interview focusing on your personal history and how you got to where you are today. We want to hear about your biggest achievements/failures, toughest challenges and overall details about the journey that lead you to this moment in your career.
2. Team Lunch. An informal conversation over a meal where we focus on connection rather than evaluation.

5. Decision and offer

We strive to make the time from interview to decision the fastest possible. The final step is for us to review your performance during the interview and perform reference checks from former colleagues or managers you agree to provide us with.

As soon as both are done, we will be ready to inform you with our final decision and offer!

Expect 72 hours in average.

How to prepare

Technical Interviews

• As you will be coding remotely on coderpad.io during the Technical Screening, we recommend taking a few minutes to practice using it beforehand.

• Most technical interview steps will involve computer science fundamentals, so we recommend practicing common data structures and associated algorithms.

Non Technical Interviews

• This is our chance for us to learn more about you, your story, and your interests. It's also your chance to learn more about amo from early employees directly and make sure we're a good career fit for you.

• Come up with questions for your interviewers. Consider expectations for your next job, what you'd like to get out of your next work experience, what you'd like to see and avoid. Don't hesitate to ask about company goals, challenges, team work, etc.

During the interview

• Ask clarifying questions, communicate with your interviewer, think aloud.

• Long moments of silence are ok — consider taking a minute or two of silence for critical thinking when necessary.

Thank you again for taking the time to interview with amo. We want to make your experience as smooth and comfortable as possible, so please let us know if there is anything else we can do to make the process better. We are all excited to get to know you!