Thoughtworks interview questions

Applied online, received a online coding challenge. Completed it and did a phone interview with one of the recruiters. I was asked to fill out a survey and a personality test. They asked general questions, about my experience, why I was interested in TW and what social justice meant to me, very laid back. Then I was invited for assessment day, where they gave a company tour and had us do a wonderlic test and the logic test and a group assignment. The group assignment was a made up consulting scenario where you were to build a house for some pugs and each person was given a bunch of requirements from the pugs, the goal was to create a floor plan and make it as cheap as possible. After assessment day was the technical interviews. The first interview being pair programming with two TW devs. This went OK, one dev seemed very annoyed while the other was very helpful in answering questions. The 2nd part of the interview is with another pair but they were more on the HR/recruiting side where they asked you about your values and thoughts on social justice, and what the 3 pillars of TW were. They also go over the questions you answered in the questionnaire they sent out. The question they went over for me was the "what would you do as president of the world?" I was also asked about what I have done for social justice. After that was a short break and the last interview would be the technical interview with two different TW devs. Here they gave me a hour to prepare a 5 minute presentation on a STEM (science, technology, engineering or math) topic and there would also be a 5 minute q&a. This seemed incredibly hit or miss. One dev would be interested and the other would have absolutely no clue what I would be talking about and just be totally disengaged. After that they wanted me to whiteboard the mars rover problem and talk them through it. The wonderlic was 50 questions in 12 minutes. I must have done poorly because they asked me to do it twice (once at assessment, once at the technical interview). The logic test is not very hard, but I recommend you look at some example problems: http://freshnerpaper.blogspot.com/2012/01/thought-works-placement-paper.html has some. READ the directions very carefully because sometimes it will try to trip you up. IE go to the box number in box 10 (so if box 10 had the number 5, you would go to box 5). Also for the last 3 tests you treat them like a maze it so draw the route that matches the condition and figure out what satisfies that path. The interview was not stressful, but the emphasis is really on object oriented programming. Does the name of your classes and methods make sense? Can you explain the program you wrote? Personally, I felt the whole social justice stichk was incredibly pretentious. The folks I talked with were taking credit for the companys efforts when they themselves do not sound like they contributed anything to the cause. Just seemed really full of it. You can't participate in any social justice causes until 2 years into employment or so anyways. If you're considering TW because you're new at programming and have heard of the great things about TW university, I was told it was more of a consulting crash course where you are thrown into a big simulation. There would be some mandatory classes after TW university for building/deploying applications but a lot of learning will be up to you to do alone. So my advice is don't take this program/career path as the silver bullet that is the only way that will get you up to a professional level - do not get discouraged at all if you get declined. No mentor or teacher will ever get you there, you got to learn it yourself - they can help but remember it is you that crosses the line, stay persistent and passionate. This was a good learning experience for sure and I definitely took the opportunity to ask developers some technical questions of my own - that I always wanted answered. At the end of the day, I was probably not what they were looking for technically (I think I nailed the logic test but bombed the wonderlic and I felt like my OOP knowledge was lacking) but also I don't think it was an exact cultural fit. The interviews were always in pairs and it felt like one person was geninuely interested but another would not be. The interviewers were very professional and kept the atmosphere laid back so I did not feel like I was being grilled or anything. Best of luck to any future candidates.

First you go through a "culture interview" where 2 of their employees just asked me random questions to see how I thought, what I valued, etc. then there was a logics exam where you have to solve several "algorithms" and point out the results you get from variables (if you are not familiar with algorithms, I recommend practicing it - just look on the web for examples of ThoughtWorks test), then English verbal reasoning exams - where you mostly have to mark the correct answer. After passing this, I moved to an interview with the head of local HR and the HR business partner I was going to work with. The interview was very friendly, but I didn't pass and didn't receive much of a feedback why.