You would need to really want to work for Canonical to find success in technical interviews.
Likely to mainly attract Ubuntu fanboys and desperate candidates for the most part – Excerpt from a Glassdoor review
The process
The full hiring process is apparently 15 steps and can span several months:
- You browse their open positions via linkedin or on another platform
- Create CV and apply.
- You will receive a response wanting long answers (essay) style on why you want to join canonical at that specific position (and how great canonical is). As well as your experience with specific canonical related things.
- Someone will respond and request you to do an IQ style test where your reaction speed counts (takes 30 – 45 minutes)
- You then need to do a difficult social questionnaire with confusing, complex and contradicting questions that you must answer with a scale of 1 – 5 (takes about 20 minutes but much longer if you want to fully understand the questions as they are very unclear).
- At this point you may be rejected or proceed to an in-person interview.
According to this redit post on Canonicals Hiring Process for Technical Personnel
The next steps are:
- Interview with HR – not a person on the actual team you are applying for
- A Take home technical assessment
- 2 seperate 1 hour technical interviews.
One applicant turned down the next steps due to the prolonged time and effort required.
A post on greendoor about Canonical’s process, states:
The company has recently added a new hiring process that requires things like writing multipage essays with questions going back to high school, along with IQ tests and personality tests. Candidates can make it through the entire months-long process only to be rejected at the very end by the CEO who hasn’t even talked to them.
It is very disappointing to hear but in line with reality.
Here is another gem:
The current candidate interview process is 15 steps long, includes writing an essay about how great Canonical is, and ends with personal interviews and vetting by Mark.
Conclusion
You are free to choose.
Just know that it will likely be a time waster. The company has very little respect for the time of potential hires and that is reflected by the poor and lengthly hiring process.
The process also seems skewed towards obsequious individuals.