This document outlines the hiring process at Axelerant specific to Frontend Engineers. It is intended to help you determine if Axelerant is the right fit for you and set you up for success in the hiring process. This is a guide to be better prepared by understanding our expectations and what we look for. If you have any questions, please reach out to the recruitment team.

About Axelerant and the Frontend team

Axelerant is a digital service agency offering services like Experience Design, Digital Experience Platforms, Digital Engineering, and Quality Engineering. Our core values of enthusiasm, kindness, and openness align with this commitment, which we look for in every team member at Axelerant.

As a Frontend Engineer at Axelerant, you would use Drupal, Twig, SASS, JavaScript, ReactJS, and other technologies to style and build complex solutions for our customers. Given the scale and complexity of our solutions, you will likely not be building it alone. This means that it is essential that you can contribute to the system as a team and put the team’s needs first (our KPIs are also designed to be team-first). 

While we are distributed and respect your needs for flexibility, we also expect you to be accountable for the tasks assigned. You should be proactive and communicate the status of your tasks elaborately. This is just one of the examples of how we put our team’s needs over our own.

On the technical side, we expect you to follow standardized practices in building websites/applications, writing code, and delivering quality. We collaborate heavily with the community here. Our processes are built on top of what the community already uses and such tools are shared openly (look at our Github account). We expect you to use them and also help improve them.

All of these expectations are tempered with support for your needs. Our efforts are to provide you with a stable and psychologically safe environment where you can thrive and fulfil your career aspirations. This means we provide you with training, mentoring, peer support, life and performance coaching, and the ability to find resources for your development needs. Look at our benefits page for more information.

Feel free to talk to our recruitment team if you have any questions about working at Axelerant.

The Process

Typically, the hiring process for a Frontend engineer takes up to a few weeks. It depends on the availability of interview slots and how quickly you can complete the interview test, if applicable. We often see the entire process take about a month, but in an expedited process, all of these steps could be completed even within a week.

We evaluate your profile and application at every step of the way. We also describe how we evaluate your application at each stage of the process below.

Applying

The process begins when you apply for a position, typically from our careers page. On applying, your profile is created in our ATS (applicant tracking system) and is tracked there throughout the process. You might receive some questionnaires, and someone might contact you to schedule a conversation.

How we evaluate

We check for general fitment as per the job description. Depending on the level you apply, we check the quality of your written responses to our questionnaire and the content of your resume. For example, if you are applying for L3 or higher positions, we want to see some experience working in large teams and leading small teams. 

Similarly, such positions also require above-average writing skills. Common errors such as consistently poor spelling, lack of capitalization, and other common grammatical errors may lead to rejection. We are not looking for 100% accuracy; this is not the only factor we consider anyway. Still, glaring errors reduce your chances of moving ahead, especially those easily avoided by a spell check or a tool like Grammarly.

We also check your resume for the kind of work you have done. We don’t depend on the titles but look at the kind of work you have done in the past. Rich and specific detail would help us better decide and find alignment.

Another area we consider is your online presence. We look at your Drupal.org profile to see your community participation and other places like LinkedIn. We understand that you may not have had the opportunity to contribute to Drupal, so you won’t be rejected for not having a profile. That said, we highly value community engagement, and having an online presence can work in your favour.

Finally, we also value certifications, especially those provided by Acquia. If you hold any certifications (even if expired), be sure to list them.

Culture conversation

The first conversation we would have is called a “Culture Conversation”. This is to find alignment between us in our values and basic check on fitment by gauging the candidates’ interest in the role, and communication skills, clarifying various points about their application/resume and answering any questions regarding the process/company.

How we evaluate

We are not necessarily looking for culture fitment when hiring, but we look at ways you add value to Axelerant. We want to know more about how well you align with our core values and what perspectives you bring. Here, we also check how clearly you can communicate using English (our language of communication across the teams) and how relevant your experience is to Axelerant.

After the cultural conversation, you may move to the peer interview stage. Since this is a lengthy conversation and online calls can be tiring, we have split this into two rounds.

Peer Interview Round 1: Background and Common Technical concepts

The first round covers your background and the challenges you have faced in your career. We are sure you might face unique challenges every day, but we would like to hear about those challenges demonstrating your skills and capabilities for the level you are applying. For example, at L1, we expect you to share challenges related to learning new technologies and meeting deadlines. At L3 or L4, we would be more interested in complex challenges such as integrations and challenges in the team. This typically lasts 20-30 minutes.

A discussion of common technical concepts follows this. We usually talk about standard CSS layouts, JavaScript DOM manipulations, Semantics, Accessibility and reusable components, but it may change depending on your background. We expect this to take about 15-20 minutes of your time.

Finally, we look forward to answering any questions you have regarding Axelerant, the job role, the hiring process, or anything else. We value meaningful questions and discussions from you.

Interim: Coding Test

After the first round, we want to know more about your technical skills and invite you to submit an existing code sample or take our coding test. A Figma design will be given for reference to develop a multi-page design using your preferred coding language. The task will be shared over stackblitz.com for further evaluation.

How we evaluate

After sharing code on stackblitz.com following things will be considered for evaluation.

• Semantics followed in the HTML markup language.

• Accessibility implementations as per given guidelines.

• SASS code and utilisation of variables, mixins and functions.

• BEM and SMACSS naming conventions.

• Lighthouse score considerations for Performance, Accessibility, best practices, SEO and PWA.

• JavaScript or frameworks like ReactJS/Angular/Vue js code quality check-ins.

Peer Interview Round 2: In-depth Interview

If we decide to move forward, we invite you to round 2, where we will discuss technology in-depth. The list of topics will be shared with you well before the interview, and we expect this will help you prepare in advance. We don’t want you to be surprised by the questions in the interview. The topics apply to all levels, but the kind of questions we ask depend on the level for which you are applying. For example, we expect applicants at L3 or L4 level to be more familiar with topics such as JavaScript concepts like promises, event loops, closures, drupal twig preprocessing, and CSS layouts using flex/grid, HTML semantics, and Accessibility. There is also a chance we might use your code sample for a discussion if necessary.

How we evaluate

In these rounds, we look at your past experiences and challenges and how relevant that is to what you will do here. For the code walkthrough section, we evaluate how clearly you can explain the code and why you wrote the code the way you did. As mentioned, we also check if you use coding style and other programming standard practices.

We also check for your technical expertise based on our daily tasks. We don’t look for 100% coverage here with the complete understanding that nobody can know everything. We look for specific baseline skills depending on the role, and anything on top of that is a good-to-have bonus. For this reason, we may talk about many topics and ask many in-depth questions, but we don’t expect you to answer every question.

Offer

If everything checks out, we will talk with you to discuss the offer and the next steps. Depending on your performance in the interviews, we may adjust the role so that there is a higher chance of success.

Know the team

Bhanita is a recruiting operations specialist and the SPOC throughout the hiring process for candidates and the business. She will meet the candidates initially before or after the test for preliminary screening to find alignment or fitment between them and our requirements. To find out more about her, read her LinkedIn profile.

Getting Help

I hope this document helps you understand Axelerant better and set you up for a successful interview experience with us. We appreciate any feedback you might have about this document and our hiring process. For this or any questions you may have about working with us, please reach out to the recruitment team.