Why does Whereby ask candidates to prepare a practical project?

Giving all of our candidates an opportunity to complete a paid practical task gives us a unique insight into how you will work within our team at Whereby.

Practical tasks have the added benefit of being focused solely on what really matters for the job, and are an excellent tool to reduce and combat unconscious bias and discrimination.

Here at Whereby we are committed to giving people from all walks of life the opportunity to be successful. We ask that you spend no more than the recommended time on this project (generally one to two hours), and will make sure you’re given all the time and tools you need to approach the problem with confidence. We will also ensure you are paid for your time. We offer £20/$20/€20 an hour for each hour you spend on the project, to a maximum of 5 hours. Please note that this may have tax implications, so if you’d prefer us to donate your money we would be happy to do that to a charity of your choice.

Even if you feel you can complete the practical work sooner, we ask that you take at least a few days, and - if you can - make it inclusive of one weekend, so that you suffer no unnecessary stress or pressure.

Please thoroughly read the case study and task we send through, and know we're there for any and all questions. We have structured every project in a way so that you can rest assured that this work is relevant to the role, but not compromising confidentiality, and we will never use your work for our commercial purposes (we commonly do all we can to make the problem entirely fictional).

What is Whereby's approach to diversity and inclusion?

🌎 We believe in everyone

We fundamentally believe talent is distributed to all of us in equal measure. We open our doors (physical or URL) to everyone and we see our differences as a strength; it’s this philosophy that drives us towards our mission.

This means we see your unique history as having a value money cannot buy; we believe in the strength of every intersection of race, religion or belief, ethnic origin, different physical ability, family structure, socio-economics, age, nationality or citizenship, marital, domestic or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, gender identity.

We also believe that remote working is one of the biggest levers for DE&I available to us and at the moment we are not exercising this fully - we are working to correct this and implement actionable, measurable programmes around DEI to improve Whereby's representation.

Do I need to have a degree to work at Whereby?

Not at all. Our team comes from a range of different backgrounds. Some of our roles require degrees as a compliance or role-requirement, but it is not a blanket rule, and we are always open to be challenged on any requirements in our job descriptions - we know that talent comes in all shapes, sizes, and backgrounds.

Do I need to speak Norwegian?

Although we love our Norwegian speaking team, we know their language skills are just as helpful as our Dutch, Japanese, English, and Hindi speaking candidates. Our team comes from a range of different backgrounds. Some of our roles may require some languages for the role, but English is our only required language to around an IELTS 6 standard.

I've been asked to do a Slack interview, why do you do these?

We appreciate this may be a little strange; despite so many companies moving to more asynchronous communication platforms still very few use Slack for interviewing. But Slack has become a really useful tool in our interview process because it is so reflective of the way we'll be working together day-to-day.

We are a distributed team, which means we want you to understand the reality of working in this way throughout our entire recruitment process: you may meet some of your colleagues in person months after starting in our team!

Ultimately, Slack is one part of the whole process, but it is one that helps us best assess fit and competence while having quite a lot of benefits for our team and you as a candidate. It does this because it is: