RV Puerto Rico | Our Tech Hiring Process
We all know the hiring process can be intimidating and even stressful at times. Here at RV Puerto Rico (RVPR), we want our hiring process to be a positive and helpful experience for both the applicant and the interviewers. Our team focuses on providing an inclusive interview process that allows us to assess talent based on the individual's skills and how they could fit our company values. This helps us best match candidates with our open roles, and allows us to keep growing and impacting the local tech community on the island.
If you're interested in applying for a tech role at RVPR, keep reading - we've laid out everything you need to know about our hiring process below!
About RV Puerto Rico: Originally part of Red Ventures' FORWARD787 initiative, RVPR officially opened its local office at the beginning of 2020. Located in the heart of Santurce, RVPR fosters an incredible culture that combines the speed and agility of a start-up with the access and reach of a global company. Learn more about Red Ventures here.
How to Prepare
Before diving into the interview process, it’s important to prepare for any career move you decide to pursue. As we take on new challenges and roles, we need to be aware of our strengths and opportunities. Here are a few things to do before clicking that “Submit Application” button:
- Self-Assessment: Understand where you are in your career and the next step you would like to pursue. What do you enjoy the most? What are the areas that you are successful in?
- Update your resume and LinkedIn profile: Add any side projects to your preferred version control hosting platform. Make sure you mention them in your resume. Here’s an article with some helpful resume builder tips (written by one of our hiring pros!).
- Consider the culture: Take some time to analyze what company culture and working environment you’re looking for. Learn more about our engineering culture here.
- Think about your values: What mission do you want your company to serve? For example, more people prefer to be part of companies with active participation in their communities, or those that prioritize employee engagement and belonging. Check out Red Ventures’ diversity page here.
The Five Interview Stages
The RVPR interview process may differ slightly for different roles inside the tech organization, such as internships versus leadership roles, but the process will always follow these five core steps:
1. Apply!
Visit our careers page and select the job posting that best suits your experience and skills, then fill out the required information and apply. When you submit your application, you have decided that being part of the RV Puerto Rico tech team could be the next step in your career! Please be patient while we review your application.
2. Recruiter Phone Interview
After reviewing your application and finding a match between your profile and an open role within our team, a recruiter will reach out to schedule an interview. This is an initial conversation to learn more about your experience and get a better understanding of what you are looking for in your next career opportunity. The recruiter phone interview is also a chance for you to learn more about Red Ventures – come prepared with questions!
2. Technical Interview
In this step of the process, we’ll verify if you’re a fit for our team and assess key skills that will help you succeed in your desired role. This interview (a Zoom video call) will be conducted by a hiring manager, a peer, or a senior engineer from the Red Ventures tech organization. You and the interviewer will have technical discussions around your resume and preferred technologies. In this step, we're seeking to learn more about your technical skills and how you leverage them in your current day-to-day role.
At the end of the Zoom call, the interviewer will provide a few minutes for you to ask questions. This is a perfect moment to ask about our engineering culture, technologies, and even the interviewer’s experience at RV.
Remember, this is a conversation - not a pop quiz! The technical interview provides candidates with a glimpse of life on our tech team, and gives interviewers a chance to learn about your experience and subject-matter knowledge. We recommend reading this article (written by RV recruiters!) to help you ace your virtual interview.
3. Code Review
You will receive a take-home assignment to complete, but this will not be a live coding exercise. We leverage Github to host the assignment, and you should open a Pull Request with your code updates and documentation. We don’t have hard timelines - we understand that you’re probably still working full time and that it could be difficult to allocate time to complete the assignment.
If you need more time, reach out to your recruiter about an extension.
Our best advice for the coding exercise is to use the technology, framework, or programming language you feel most familiar with. When you receive the assignment, don’t forget to look at the bonus features to score extra points with the code reviewer! The code reviewer could be a hiring manager, a peer, or a senior engineer from our tech community. If you pass to the next round, you’ll have a session to go over the code, and possibly solve bugs or add features.
4. “On-Site”
Following your code review, you’ll have a full day of interviews to help us make an in-depth assessment of your technical skills and understand what your future performance could look like on our team. During this time, you'll get to know us better and learn more about how we approach problem-solving. This step will be different depending on the role; it could include a Red Ventures office tour (due to COVID-19 protocols, we are only conducting virtual tours at this time), code review session, technical discussion, and/or behavioral interviews.
Since you will be attending multiple interviews, we advise you to get plenty of rest the night before. Try to focus on learning from the experience, and have fun! You will have interviews with engineers, business analysts, and leaders who are all interested in learning more about you and your skills.
The on-site interview also includes a whiteboarding session - a collaboration exercise where the interviewer will work alongside you to solve a given problem. It’s important to express your thoughts and what you are trying to accomplish - don’t be afraid to ask questions and get input from the interviewers, too. Usually, the interviewers are senior engineers, principals, or directors with considerable tenure on our team. We value honesty and teamwork over correctness and speed. Ultimately, this is an exercise to understand your thought process and how you collaborate with other engineers.
4.5. Executive Interview
Depending on the role you’re considering, you might have an interview with an RV executive. Just like you did in all of your previous interviews, simply focus on being true to yourself! We want to ensure that you are a good fit in our team, and most importantly, that we’re a good fit for you. And as always, don’t be afraid to ask questions!
5. Offer
Once our team has come to a decision, a recruiter will reach out to you with an offer (congrats!) and next steps. If you choose to accept, you'll receive more details on your onboarding process, where we’ll get you ramped up for your new role.
And that's it! If you're interested in applying for a technical role at RVPR, browse open position on our careers page. Best of luck!