We recognize that it can be challenging to take time off a current job to interview for a new one. For candidates who are already working full time, leaving the office or being unavailable for several hours in a day to go to interviews might not be an option. That’s why, at Stride, we’ve created an interview approach that values and prioritizes your time at each step of the process.
Your time is important.
Our initial recruiter screens are limited to thirty minutes or less and can be done via video or phone, so if you’re at the office, you can duck into a conference room or step outside for a few minutes to chat with us.
We schedule these calls based on availability through an app called Calendly, which provides you with multiple time options that you get to choose from. Stride’s full-time recruiters operate in several time zones and we do our best to be flexible with yours, leveraging co-location wherever – and whenever – possible.
If you move forward in our interview process, we do not require heavy prep work for our job-specific interviews. There’s no take-home code test. No presentations that need to be prepared beforehand. All of our interviews, whether for a designer, engineer, product manager, or business team position, require only the time commitment for the interview itself. That means, if your design interview is scheduled for an hour, you can expect it to take an hour – not one hour, plus eight more of at-home work.
Everything you’ll need to know about the interview is precompiled and sent to you beforehand in the meeting invite. That includes the name and profiles of your interviewers, a clearly-stated goal of the interview, and the prompt you’ll be given and coding platform information, if applicable.
We utilize a scheduling platform, Ashby - Applicant Tracking System, for our job-specific interviews. Ashby allows users to pre-coordinate interviewers’ schedules, so candidates moving forward have immediate access to a schedule of time options for their next interview with us. We’ve front-loaded interviewers’ availability, week by week and day by day, for the entire year, so your choices won’t be limited to a small window of time. As with our initial screening interviews, you get to choose a day and time from those options that works best for you.
We encourage open communication.
Whether or not you end up working for us, we want to help you maintain a good relationship with your current employer. We are flexible with start dates to allow you the time you need to wrap up responsibilities at your current workplace before joining Stride.
Our recruiters will share with you what to expect at every stage, and will ask for your feedback. Stride is built on a culture of learning and our recruiting team is constantly revamping our interview process to ensure that we are accommodating the real needs of our candidates. Likewise, our recruiters offer you feedback (if desired) throughout the process to help you grow and learn, as well.
If you have unique accommodation requests, we want to know! We strive to honor all accommodation needs, such as requiring more time in an interview. Open lines of communication on both ends are important to us. That’s also why we aim to make a decision on an offer within 48 business hours of the final interview. Whether or not you’re a candidate whose current job commitments depend on the outcome of a Stride interview, we make it a point not to keep you waiting.
Stride’s mission is to create practical solutions that address real-world needs. Our team applies the same consideration to clients, employees, and candidates, which is why we strive to make it as easy as possible to interview with us while still employed elsewhere.
Dan Chessin
