1️⃣The Hiring Process
👋 Introduction
We are a small team committed to quality, and therefore our hiring process is geared to gather all necessary information to make a decision. It is forever iterative and never set in stone.
1️⃣ Full-time roles
The steps might be slightly different for everyone, just like everyone who goes through them! Overall, here’s what it looks like:
1️⃣ Send us a trimmed CV
Send us a fairly abbreviated document containing your work experience, projects you’ve worked on, side project related to the position, your responsibilities and contribution, and some misses and what you’ve learned from them.
Please do not include anything that might be prone to bias: photo, demographic information, educational information etc.
2️⃣ Answer opinion questions
In our online application, answer a few questions so we can understand your thought processes and clarity and the kind of person you are such as: what makes you tick, your favourite piece of your work, your top 3 reads, your favourite programming language and why, what sources do you go to for forming opinions in building software, what would make or break a position at Obvious for you, or your biggest professional influences.
Remember, there are no right or wrong answers, just yours. And all we’re hoping for is that these answers will make for a riveting discussion.
3️⃣ First call with People Ops
This call is to confirm alignment on the role, team, details of work. It’s your space to ask us questions, assess us as a potential employer and ensure your needs are tabled.
We like to have the compensation conversation early on to get aligned on what we can offer and if that makes subsequent conversations worthwhile for you. We do NOT ask for your current salary/ your salary slip. Each role at Obvious has a specific compensation number, thus eliminating internal bias and ensuring parity.
4️⃣ Take Home exercises and Craft interview
We do either a paired or a Take home exercise followed by an interview to assess skill level.
Here’s what it looks like if you’re applying for a design role:
Pair design session: In the first stage, we're evaluating critical thinking, lateral thinking and time-boxing. You will get to understand the context and brainstorm with us on ideas. We're not giving you a written brief and asking you to work out the problem on your own in a silo because that's not how we work in real life.
Work on your solution: After the completion of Stage 1, we would like you to take a day and turn the solution into a high fidelity mockup in Figma. While we value the thinking a lot, we also believe in solid execution.
Present your solution to us and go through a craft interview: After completing the two stages, you will be asked to present the results of Stage 2 to us over a video call and also discuss your portfolio along with any other questions you may have with one of the the team members you’ll be working with. In this stage, we are evaluating interaction design, visual design and engineering delivery
5️⃣ The final interview and decision
This final interview is to gauge craft, workplace needs, culture and will typically happen with a manager or function head. Expect questions around technical skills, your journey so far and what you’re looking for in the future. Feel free to ask us questions or give us feedback—bouquets and brickbats alike!
We will get back to you with an answer or a formal offer letter within 10 working days.
We are a small team committed to quality, and therefore do not focus on closing the application process quickly. Instead, we take about 2-3 weeks to fully make sure both sides are aligned and have all information necessary to make decisions. We do not at this point give out feedback to each applicant. However, please feel free to reach out to the person conducting hiring for your role or at [email protected] in case you’d like detailed feedback on your application.
2️⃣ Rolling Internships
Sometimes we bring in a few students to Obvious to see what it's like to work at a digital product design studio. This will typically be an 8-week-long paid program where students come in and get their hands dirty solving a tricky problem (with some excellent mentorship, of course).
While the internship journey looks different for each individual, here’s what to expect:
Week 1: Get onboarded and settle in. At the end of the week, introduce yourself to the team and talk about your life journey.
Week 2: Align with your mentor on the scope and process of your problem statement. Refine it and come up with a hypothesis.
Week 3-4: Use primary and secondary research, co-create with potential users and investigate the problem. Refine the initial hypothesis.
Week 5-8: Use our design/engineering frameworks and translate it into a well thought out 4 week execution plan. Build out the solution iteratively and in the final week of the internship, document your project and present it internally.
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