Employer Interview Guides by Company Type

Compare how FAANG and Big Tech, GCC and captive centres, IT services firms, consultancies and startups score technical interviews, design rounds and domain depth.

FAANG • MAANG • Big Tech

Big Tech and product companies

Large product companies running a standardised, centrally calibrated loop: an algorithmic screen, one or two design rounds scaled to level, and a behavioural round scored against published principles.

Key Scoring Traps:

Optimising the algorithm and never stating the complexity or the constraint that made it necessary
Designing for a scale nobody asked about, which reads as pattern-matching rather than judgement

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GCC • global capability centre • global capability center

GCC and captive centres

The offshore engineering arm of a global bank, insurer, retailer, telco, or product company, hiring to own a product area rather than to staff a project.

Key Scoring Traps:

Treating the domain round as small talk and answering it with generic engineering
Claiming a framework on the CV and failing on its runtime behaviour, which is the fastest no in this loop

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consulting • system integrator • SI

IT services and consulting

Firms that sell delivery capacity and advisory work to clients, where the interview is partly technical assessment and partly a rehearsal of how you will sound in front of the client paying for you.

Key Scoring Traps:

Answering an ambiguous scenario with a technical solution before establishing who the stakeholder is and what they are optimising for
Treating process questions as bureaucracy, when the panel reads that as someone who will surprise a client with a slipped date

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startup • scale-up • seed

Startups and scale-ups

Small product teams hiring for end-to-end ownership, where the loop is short, idiosyncratic, and usually anchored on a take-home or a paired session in the actual codebase.

Key Scoring Traps:

Over-engineering the take-home, which reads as someone who cannot judge stage-appropriate scope
Deferring every product question to a product manager who does not exist yet

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