At Cockroach Labs, we’ve long worked at reducing bias for better, more inclusive recruiting outcomes. We do this by removing resumes throughout the hiring process so that interviewers can focus on you, the candidate— not your background. We also emphasize exercise-based interviews that give people the opportunity to demonstrate that they can do the job instead of recounting past experience. These practices are rooted in a basic, human principle for hiring: as a company looking for amazing talent, we want to eliminate hurdles that might keep you from showing us your strengths in an interview, not create them.

Four years ago, we saw another opportunity to help people put their best foot forward: we decided to make our interview prep materials openly available.

Often, you’re asked to apply for a job with no insight into what the interview process looks like, how long it will take, what skills you’ll be evaluated on, and more. With our open-source interview repository, we give you a transparent picture of the entire recruiting cycle at Cockroach Labs whether or not you apply. We think that an equal ability to prepare for our interviews makes them fairer.

Setting You Up for Success

When we were a smaller company with less specialized roles, we updated our repository with the latest interview for each role across our team. As we grew and spun up dozens of new roles each quarter, that became harder to do.

Instead, our interview guide now provides you with a comprehensive overview of the recruiting process, Cockroach Labs’ values, and each section of our repository features example interviews relevant to the skillsets our teams value. By reviewing these materials, you should be able to start interviewing here with confidence and familiarity.

Throughout your interview process at Cockroach Labs, your recruiter will provide you with interview prep well in advance of your next exercise, whether it be through a pre-interview prep call or a document outlining what to expect during the meeting and what work you should do in advance. We know that exercise-based interviewing is a time investment, so we aim to make it as seamless as we can.

No “Gotcha” Questions

We’ve all heard of oddball interview questions in tech like “How would you get an elephant into a refrigerator?” They’re said to draw out what some consider unmeasurable qualities, but to put it simply, we don’t use them. These “gotcha” questions don’t prompt anyone to show their skills or be creative, but to improvise. Interviews should be challenging, but they shouldn’t be designed to trip you up.

Making it Easier to Be Your Best Self

We don’t want you to jump through hoops to join us: instead, our goal is to provide insight into what it’ll be like to interview here. That way, you can make an informed decision when applying and preparing for your interviews.

When you sit down for an interview at Cockroach Labs, you can be sure that we’re focused on you and your performance, not your resume. We know that interviews are nerve-wracking, and our hope is that making it easier to come prepared will relieve some of the stress they come with.

Our recruiting process is built for humans to be their best selves and share the strengths that will land them the job. We’re always looking for people to build great things with us— check out our careers page if this sounds like you.