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We’ve worked hard at Desana to try to create a fair hiring process that tests you on your skills and abilities, rather than relying on more subjective criteria that can open us up to bias.
It’s an ongoing process and we’re always trying to improve our systems. For the sake of transparency though, we thought it would be helpful to share how things work behind the scenes.
Although it may vary based on the role, this is the typical hiring process at Desana.
Before you hit “apply”, take a moment to get to know us a little better (beyond our website) so that you know whether Desana is the right company for you—it’s the best thing for everyone if you’re truly excited to join. If you don’t like what you see, that’s okay too.
Here are some useful links:
We use Willo for the first stage of our interview process so that we can see how you perform in short video calls, as well as written questions (where relevant to the role). This should take you around 20 minutes to complete so hopefully is not too time consuming.
The pre-recorded interview is a particularly important tool for roles which require candidates to come across as confident and engaging in video calls, like sales, account management and partnerships. It also supports us with assessing candidates based on potential, rather than just a CV: some candidates may not have as much experience but would be able to do the role and seeing them in a real life scenario may gave them an opportunity they otherwise would not have had.
As an international employer, it can often be difficult coordinating interviews across different time zones too. Willo enables you to complete your interview at a date and time that suits you and on any device, without having to wait to schedule an interview time that might be inconvenient. You will get unlimited retake opportunities for each question and you can practise your answer and make sure you are happy with it before you submit it. Having time to consider your answers and the opportunity to answer it again can really help put you at ease
Responses are scored by 2-3 scorers, which normally includes the Head of the department and a member of the People team. We always use more than one scorer as it means we can get a more accurate number - for example, someone might be having a bad day and score harshly. To prevent scorers being influenced by each other, they are able to score without seeing each others’ scores.
We invite the highest scoring candidates to an in-person interview.
In advance of the interview, we will ask you to complete a take home task that you will then talk through on the interview. Typically we ask you not to spend more than two hours on the task so we can get an accurate idea of how you would work in a time sensitive situation - and also because we are aware that people have lives to live outside of applying for roles with us!
The take home task gives us a helpful insights into whether you can do the job. It’s always based on situations that might be relevant to the role but - so that we aren’t at risk of stealing anyone’s hard work - we always come up with a different scenario to what the real life role would involve. In the past we’ve had tasks like recruiting for a cruise ship or coming up with a PR campaign around wearable technology.
There is always more than one interviewer on the call to ensure that we get a more accurate impression of you. We try to keep these interviewers consistent across all the interviews for the role at at this second sta.