r/Cluely

Applied online in the 2026 cycle, no referral. The whole process took a little under six weeks.

Recruiter Screen (30 minutes): Video call on my background, why growth, and why Spotify. She asked about my comfort with experiment data, and that topic came back in every round after.

Hiring Manager Round (60 minutes): Resume first, with questions on how I measured each project. Then which levers to check if free to paid conversion drops in one market, and finally designing an A/B test for the onboarding flow.

Case Study Round (60 minutes): A live case on user growth in an emerging market. Halfway through she cut the budget in the scenario and I reworked the plan for the rest of the hour.

Final Round (3 short interviews): A manager, a data partner, and a product partner. One behavioral, one follow up on my case answers, one on disagreeing with a data conclusion.

Update (Talked with another candidate): Someone from the same cycle got a case on podcast retention instead of market growth. Everything before the case matched mine, so the case topic is the main variable.

Sharing this because the growth posts I found were all about frameworks, and my rounds were about experiment design and metrics. Happy to answer any questions

Had a few ideas but they’re all very risky with a low probability of success.

1. Invisible Earbud

Regular earbuds are obviously too big and noticeable so you would have to use one of those invisible ear buds that you insert directly into your ear canal. Have your accomplice on the other end of the phone call. Tape a small mic inconspicuously under your clothes so that your accomplice can hear everything and feed you answers accordingly.

Cons: Those types of earbuds are vey inconsistent and have shitty sound quality. Unlikely you’ll be able to hear all the info you’ll need.

2. “Ear injury”

Make up an excuse to wear ear bandages and hide a regular earbud under them.

Cons: Risky. They might ask for a doctor’s note and will likely be on high alert throughout the interview.

3. Hire an Impersonator

Set your interviewing location to an office in another you don’t plan on working at and hire someone to impersonate you and do the interview for you. If the company you’re applying to is large, there’s a chance that none of the front desk staff or interviewers will know what you look like.

If the front desk asks for an ID, I don’t believe they scan or verify its legitimacy in most cases so you might get away with showing them a counterfeit.

Unless the company asks you to attach a photo of yourself to their portal, it’s the interviewer likely won’t cross reference the face of the interviewer with your face in recorded video interviews from previous rounds.

Cons: Extremely risky. I’ve made a thousand assumptions any of which could be wrong and get you caught.

These are the best ideas I could come up and none of them sound feasible at all. Does anyone have any better ideas by chance.

Applied with a referral in the 2026 cycle. Got the offer after about five weeks.

Recruiter Screen (30 minutes): Standard call on my background and the role. She told me to prepare two stories per Leadership Principle, since interviewers compare notes and cannot hear the same story twice.

Hiring Manager Phone Screen (45 minutes): Resume first, then a STAR question on disagreeing with a decision and committing anyway. Finally, one GTM question on taking a new B2B product to market with no existing sales motion.

The Loop (4 rounds, one day): Back to back video calls with the hiring manager, two cross functional partners, and a Bar Raiser. Every round opened with Leadership Principle questions (used Cluely for that lol), and I used fourteen different stories across the day. There was also a one page written exercise ranking three launch markets, and a live case on sizing a channel partnership.

Bar Raiser: No case, only behavioral, with follow ups on every answer. She spent ten minutes on one decision I made with incomplete data.

Update (Offer timing): Verbal offer the afternoon after the debrief. Her email said "The team aligned quickly, written offer to follow within the week." It came four days later.

Sharing this because most GTM posts I found were for startups, and the Amazon loop runs on a different format. Happy to answer any questions below.

Been unemployed for a little over 3 months now. Got let go from my last job after 4+ years there (over one missed deadline).

Since then I've applied pretty much everywhere I can. But after 500+ applications, I haven't landed a single interview.

Back in 2020 I got hired with barely any experience and it felt easy in comparison. Now I've got 4 years of real experience and I'm getting ghosted by every single company.

How is the market any different from 2020 ? If anyone's gotten hired recently, could you give me a hand ?

I’ve been interviewing for this hyped startup (social media wise) for a SWE position for about six weeks now. Not only did I get 6 coding rounds, I've also gotten some sort of take home project I had to complete in a few days which ended up taking me over 4 hours to do.

Just got another email from them saying they want to do a 7th round testing my Excel skills. I'm starting to feel like I'm not being taken seriously. I don't have all the time in the world.

Should I keep going or just stop responding to them ?

Graduated today with a CS degree. Over my 4 years of college, I got no internships or cool side projects worth showing. Spent most of college doing DoorDash part time to help my family cover bills. Never had time to grind internships or leetcode at any point.

It's not like people in my class have much more except for a few kids (I go to a state school) but I still feel insanely behind and like a closer.

Only like the 10-15% really smart kids have gotten FAANG internships or cool projects. SHould I still try or is it just over ?

An hour ago I got out of a meeting that had eleven people from four different departments.

The topic was whether to migrate our production database to a new provider before the contract renewal deadline in three weeks. This was the second meeting on the same topic in nine days. The first meeting ended with an action item to "gather more data," (no one even knows what that means) and now, the task was just assigned to some different people.

I barely even had to speak at any point, my presence was actually just completely useless. I want to feel better about my day and productivity. Someone pls tell me about the most useless meeting you've ever had.

Applied during my final year of college. Had a short recruiter call, then got the offer about a month later.

Excel Take Home (3 days to submit): We got a dataset that looked like anonymized rider and driver numbers from a real market. The task was to find a pattern in the numbers and write up a short recommendation.

Hiring Manager Round (45 minutes): Video call, about 45 minutes. We started with questions on past projects and how I handled incomplete data. Then there was a live case, sizing the impact of a change to driver incentives in one city. Questions included how to validate the data and what breaks if the assumption is wrong.

Final Panel (60 minutes, three interviewers): We had a full case on entering a new market and where to place spend first. Finally, one interviewer spent close to ten minutes on a single assumption from my presentation.

Update (Talked with another candidate): Another candidate from the same cycle had a final case about pricing instead of market entry. We both had the same recruiter screen and Excel take home, but the final round content was different.

Sharing this because most BizOps posts I saw were for consulting firms, not tech companies.

Feel free to drop any questions below, will get to all of them.

Was on a final round video call last month and the interviewer forgot to mute himself for the first 10 minutes.

Could hear two people in the background having a full screaming argument.

Withdrew from the process the next day. I’ve been through a toxic work environment before and was not going back. Know your worth kings and queens.

Worst red flag you guys ever came across during an interview?

Spent the last two weeks having Cluely on half my sales calls to see whether it would help me close deals. A few stats/results are shown below:

(Results have only been registered for non-automatic rejections bc Cluely doesn't impact that at all.)

Without Cluely: Close rate: 53% Average call length: 5 mins

With Cluely: Close rate: 64% Average call length: 5 mins

The software gave me good directions for questions asked that I wasn't exactly sure about (mostly revolving around definitions of terms, concepts I didn't know, etc)

As you can see, the close rate went up 11% across the 50 calls. I would overall recommend it, especially for 20$ a month. It's really not that big of an investment.

Will start using Cluely from now on (for the upcoming months and see If I stick with it, will keep you guys updated).

Got Deel's full operations interview process in 2026 after 2 years of experience in Big Tech. In total, the interview was five rounds, two weeks long, but still I got rejected after the final round.

Round 1: Recruiter Screen (20 to 30 mins) Background, motivation, and role fit. Next steps came within 48 hours (noticed they have a super fast response time) so if they take longer just move on.

Round 2: Director of Operations (45 mins)

-How you built or improved an operational process from scratch

-How you handle competing priorities across multiple teams

-What success looks like in an operations role at a high growth company

Round 3: Take-Home Assignment (2 to 3 hours) An analytics and operations challenge tied to the role.. Addressed both the surface question and the underlying problem in the deliverable.

Round 4: Team Member Interview (30 mins) Cross-functional collaboration, process ownership, and how feedback is given and received day to day. We also reviewed my take home with the same interviewer.

Result: Got an email saying I got rejected after a few weeks. Happy to help anyone (questions in the comments).

Had an interview last week for a sales finance internship. The interviewer pulled up my resume, saw I had no prior finance or sales experience, and giggled. Then said something insinuating I had no value for the market all while having the biggest smirk on his face.

Finished the interview anyway because I didn't really have the choice. Really needed a summer internship.

Felt very disrespected all throughout the time I spent talking to him.

Look, I understand this guy probably goes through a lot of candidates but that's not a reason for disrespecting/laughing at candidates for trying to find a job.

Won't name the company but he should feel ashamed. Am I overreacting by making this post ??

Been on LinkedIn for four months applying consistently, 10 to 20 jobs per day and I didn't get a single response.

Most platforms at minimum send a rejection and LinkedIn has absolutely no standard for communication after the application. I apply for 2-3 hours a day and never get anything back.

Has anyone even ever gotten a job with LinkedIn ?

Went through the full Stripe Account Executive process in 2026. Sharing it here with you guys.

Round 1: HR Screening Call (30 mins) Background, motivation, and sales history. No scenario work. Covered experience selling technical products and what success looked like in the previous role.

Round 2: Hiring Manager Interview (45 to 60 mins) Questions from this round: "Tell me how success was measured in your last role." "Talk about a time when you led a successful negotiation." "How do you decide when to stop pursuing a prospect who won't commit?" "You are hired and put in charge of 75 accounts. How do you prioritize them and stay organized?"

Round 3: Back-to-Back Loop (Full Day) Two to three interviews back to back, each covering a distinct area. Behavioral round covered client mistakes, upsell scenarios.

Case study: recover a stalled sales deal, walked through live. Mock discovery call: live simulation with an interviewer playing a prospect.

Round 4: Final Interview (45 mins) GTM strategy scenario: develop a market entry approach for a new product segment. Covered pipeline structure, target customer profile, and a first 90-day plan.

UPDATE: Offer received within one week of the final round.

Takeaways: Rounds 1 and 2 run on STAR with sales-specific outcomes attached to every answer. Round 3 requires preparation on Stripe's product suite, specifically payments infrastructure and BaaS.

Went through the full Meta Product Growth Analyst process in 2026. Six rounds over four to ten weeks.

Round 1: Recruiter Screen (30 to 45 mins) Conversational, no technical questions. Covered background, role fit, and motivation.

Round 2: Case Study and SQL Screen (45 mins) Two sections back to back. First 30 minutes on a growth case, last 15 minutes on two SQL questions.

Case study questions: -How will you increase the comments on a group post? -We are looking to increase new user signups by 50%. What would you do? -SQL required extracting insight from a dataset. Covered joins, aggregations, and window functions.

Rounds 3 to 6: Onsite Loop (45 to 60 mins each) Four rounds, each with a single focus area.

Product improvement questions: -The views on Reels on X video are declining. How would you address this? -You manage the business page and want users to click the Boost button: How would you drive more clicks? (Examples were way more detailed than this ofc just forgot the details)

Analytical round questions: -The number of users on Instagram is increasing but on Messenger they are decreasing. Why? -How would you increase the number of purchases on Instagram Marketplace?

-SQL round: four questions covering window functions, cohort analysis, and funnel metrics. -Execution and behavioral round: cross-functional decisions and handling conflicting data ahead of a launch decision.

Takeaway & Tips: Every growth case answer needs a defined North Star metric and counter-metrics before moving to solutions. The analytical round tests metric diagnosis mainly so focus on that.

Will answer any relevant question in the comments.

Went through the full HubSpot Marketing Manager process in 2026. Five rounds over 60 days.

Round 1: Recruiter Screen (30 to 45 mins) Background and role fit. Questions on previous marketing experience and motivation for the role.

Round 2: Hiring Manager Interview (45 to 60 mins) All behavioral, STAR format throughout. "Tell me about an impactful marketing campaign you drove and the results you saw." "Tell me about a time you had to manage multiple demands within tight deadlines." "Tell me about a time you went above and beyond your job description."

Round 3: Take-Home Assessment A real-world marketing scenario. Turnaround of a few days. Output presented live in Round 4.

Round 4: Case Study Presentation (1 hour) Presented the take-home to a live panel. Topics covered: go-to-market execution, competitive positioning, ICP definition, campaign metrics, and cross-functional coordination. HubSpot's inbound methodology was tested directly here.

Round 5: Panel Interview (3 x 30 mins) Three separate conversations with peers from product, sales, and marketing. Covered cross-functional collaboration, messaging iteration, and product direction alignment.

RESULT: Offer received two weeks after the panel round. Happy to answer questions in the comments.

I have an interview tomorrow, which I don't have a great idea of, but getting that job would be really helpful for me. I bought a Pro plan for it but I am still worried about what if the interviewer asks me to share my screen. So, how can I know the number of responses I will be getting when I screen share it wont be visible.

Went through the full Microsoft Account Executive process in 2026. Five rounds over four weeks. Round 3 is framed as a scenario interview but runs on Azure product knowledge.

Round 1: Recruiter Screen (30 mins) Covered sales history, account management experience, customer profile, and territory planning approach. No product or technical questions in this round.

Round 2: Sales and Role Fit Interview (45 to 60 mins) Few questions I remember: -"How do you uncover customer needs during the discovery phase?" -"Tell me about a time you lost a deal in the enterprise sales cycle." -"How do you handle objections using value-based selling?" -"How do you prioritize accounts across a sales territory?"

Round 3: Scenario and Case Interview (45 to 60 mins) No pre-prepared decks. Questions were all about cloud migration approach, Azure, AWS, GCP differentiation, pre-proposal discovery structure, and handling resistance in digital transformation deals. Product knowledge on Azure was also tested directly.

Round 4: Behavioral and Collaboration Interview (30 to 45 mins) -"Describe a conflict with a stakeholder and how you resolved it." -"Tell me about a missed target and your follow-up approach." -"How do you incorporate feedback into your sales process?"

Round 5: Values Interview (30 mins) Three questions. Long-term customer relationship approach, definition of success in a client-facing role, and alignment with Microsoft's product direction.

UPDATE: Received the offer two weeks after Round 5.

Concrete Takeaway: Rounds 1 and 2 run on STAR structure, make sure you're comfortable with that. Round 3 requires preparation on Azure product positioning against AWS and GCP.

Happy to answer any questions you guys have, just drop the in the comments.