How to Get a Job at Hotjar
// This article is part a series of in-depth remote teams interviews. Also available: How To Get a Job at Doist!.
I’ve been willing to interview Sara for a long-time… She’s an awesome professional and Remotive community member who work at Hotjar.
Hotjar is a all-in-one analytics and feedback solution. They are a fast-growing remote team head-quartered in… Malta! One of the few remote team based in Europe.
I love how transparent they are, they made their Recruitment deck public.
Enjoy reading our interview!
-Rodolphe
Hey Sara! Can you please tell us a little about yourself and what you do at Hotjar?
Hey Rodolphe! I’m the Recruitment Coordinator here at Hotjar. I’m from Scotland, and currently living in Spain — the remote life works well for me in giving me the freedom to move around whilst still growing and learning in one role.
I look after the full-cycle recruitment process, working with our hiring teams in all areas that recruitment and some overlapping areas touch upon.
Looking at your current team, how many of them came through internal referrals or headhunting, and how many came through the traditional application process?
Of our current team, 27% came through a mix of team referrals, agencies or ‘outreach’ by members of our current team, and 63% came through normal job ads.
The remainder came through ‘reputation’ — having heard about Hotjar either because they were users of the product or had heard of the company some other way (sometimes just proximity of being in Malta, where the company was founded).
Say we decide to reach out with a cold email. What kind of message gets a reply? Any secrets for us?
Every message gets a reply. If there’s a role currently open or coming up that suits the candidate, we’ll suggest they have a read through it or keep an eye on our careers site.
Sometimes though there’s nothing in the pipeline that matches, and for these people, we prefer it if they check back on the careers site from time to time.
How important is a have previous remote work experience? Can I get away with not having worked remotely when interviewing at Hotjar?
You can definitely get away with it! Loads of Hotjarians didn’t have any remote experience prior to working here. During the recruitment process we look out for characteristics which suggest signs of being suited to remote work.
This generally has a lot to do with being self-motivated and working autonomously. The task stage in our process is a great time for us to find out about this and see how a candidate works remotely.
We’re curious, what is the one thing you never want to see again on an application. Anything you wish you saw more?
We’ve had a few cover letters that started with ‘Dear Sirs’. This is something I’d love never to see again! No need to find out who exactly you should address it to, but a simple ‘hey’ is fine.
“My favourite applications are the ones I read that leave me with a real sense for who the person is — those that convey the genuine voice of the person applying.” _Sara
Besides having a portfolio, do you like the idea of remote workers being invested in other interests? For example being active bloggers or otherwise outspoken in their community?
It’s not a must, though of course depending on the position, it could be a good selling point. Hotjar’s values have a strong sense of respect for all, and being motivated by reasons that benefit humanity.
If a candidate happens to have demonstrated a leaning towards these values through whichever means, perhaps through those you’ve mentioned, we’d love to learn that about them.
Say I make the first pass and get invited to an interview. Can you describe the interview process as briefly as possible?
First to note that we have a video stage before the interview, in which candidates record themselves answering a few questions we’ve sent them. The interview is a Google Meet/Hangouts call (video optional) with 2 or 3 Hotjarians.
The calls are pretty informal, aiming to get to know both the person’s personality and skillset better, and giving them a chance to find out more about Hotjar. If successful, we ask the candidate to complete a paid task for us. That’s the process in brief! We also outline it on our careers site.
What are the secondary skills you look for in a remote worker, besides common soft skills?
An ability and preference to work autonomously. While some people prefer to work in a more hands on environment in terms of their leads, we have a very hands off approach here.
Everyone is supported and teams keep a daily pulse on what’s going on with each other, but everyone is trusted and left to carry out their work. It’s trusted that team member will come forward when any problems or issues arise.
Would Hotjar hire someone who is a cultural fit over someone who has more industry experience and hard skills?
Always! Of course the person has to have enough experience to be able to successfully carry out their role, but we will always prioritise an alignment with our values over industry experience alone.
It’s very important to us to only bring on team members who will add to rather than detract from the values we foster here.
What are the biggest mistakes you see applicants make when applying for a job at Hotjar? Are there any specific things that keep bothering you? Please complain to us!
A surprising amount of people don’t answer the questions on our application surveys. Answers to those questions are what we use to decide who to move forward though, so we won’t move ahead with people who have left them blank.
We also have timezone restrictions in place (usually per continent) and, although we specify this in the job description and the survey questions, we do still have a lot of people apply from areas based outside of these times.
We have various reasons for setting these restrictions, a lot to do with maintaining healthy working hours and work / life balance — we want to have overlapping working hours with our teams without meaning that someone is working at 3am!
Has Hotjar has accepted interns in the past. Is that a good way to get our foot in the door?
Unfortunately not. As a small company, we’re very all-hands-on-deck and as such, don’t feel it would be fair to bring on an intern while we wouldn’t have time to properly train and help them.
How do you think Hotjar is different when hiring new talent compared to other remote teams? How does is feel to have your headquarters in Europe?
This one’s tough to answer. Whilst not unique, our task stage does set us somewhat apart, in that we pay each candidate (whether we offer them a position or not) to complete roughly 3 days of work with us.
During that time, they join us on our IM system so they can interact with our team throughout their task. For us, this is our time to learn more about the candidates to ensure — and for the candidate to be sure — that we’re making the right choice before committing, on either side.
There are a lot of interesting remote companies out there with great hiring processes though — a lot of people are getting this right!
About Europe — it feels normal, I’d say! The vast majority of us are based in, and from, Europe. Having it in Malta specifically is quite exciting though. It makes for a great spot to go visit!
Thanks so much to Sara for taking time to answer our questions!
What now?
- Hotjar is hiring (4 jobs are currently open), check those out over here! Remember, do your own research and make sure you send them an awesome cover letter.
- Follow Hotjar and Sara on Twitter/LinkedIn. Consider clapping for the article :-)
- Curious about other remote teams? Check out How To Get a Job at Doist!.
- Looking for a remote job? Check out Remotive, we help Tech professionals go remote.
PS: This article was inspired by Tobias Van Schneider “How To Get a Job…” series!
