Understanding what we're actually looking for during an interview can help you focus your preparation on what matters, instead of trying to cover everything at once.

Skills, but in Context

We do look closely at technical and professional skills, but rarely in isolation. What matters most is how you've applied them in real situations, and how you'd apply them to the specific challenges of the role you're interviewing for.

This is why concrete examples matter so much more than a list of tools or methodologies. Knowing a skill exists is one thing. Showing how you've used it to solve an actual problem is what gives us real insight into your level.

Autonomy and responsibility, calibrated to the role

The level of autonomy we expect varies significantly depending on the seniority of the position. For more junior roles, we're mostly looking at your potential, your ability to learn quickly, and how you handle guidance and feedback. For more senior roles, we look for evidence of independent decision-making, comfort with ambiguity, and the ability to take ownership of a problem from start to finish.

Knowing where the role sits on this spectrum can help you choose which examples to highlight. If you're interviewing for a senior position, focus on moments where you drove something forward on your own. If the role is more junior, it's fine, and expected, to talk about what you learned and how you grew through support from others.

Fit with our guiding principles

Skills get you in the room, but cultural fit is just as important to us. We pay attention to how your way of working aligns with our Guiding Principles, not by asking you to recite them back to us, but by listening to how you naturally talk about your past experiences.

The way you describe a difficult collaboration, a decision you made under pressure, or how you handled disagreement with a colleague often tells us more about cultural fit than a direct question ever could.

Two sides of the same decision

We never weigh skills and cultural fit against each other as if one could compensate for the other. A candidate with excellent technical skills but a poor fit with how we work is just as much of a mismatch as the reverse. We're looking for both, because that combination is what leads to people genuinely thriving here, not just succeeding on paper.