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Dropbox

How Dropbox Engineered Better Interview Prep

When Dropbox wanted to elevate its engineering candidate experience, they partnered with Stories Inc. By creating bottom-of-the-funnel video content about their hiring process and team culture, they now have a suite of interview prep materials to help any candidate.

3
Dropbox locations
8
videos created
1,900
video views in three months
Company

Dropbox has been designing an enlightened way of working since 2007 by building the world’s first smart workspace to help people and teams focus on the work that matters.

As a Virtual First company since 2020, Dropbox’s 2,500 employees collaborate from home offices, coworking spaces, coffee shops and Dropbox studios around the world.
In its move to Virtual First, Dropbox realized it had a competitive advantage to tap into a broader talent pool. Without a limitation on location, Dropbox could focus on building a distributed workforce built on technical expertise and diversity.
Challenge

In its move to Virtual First hiring, Dropbox wanted to ensure all its engineering candidates were set up for success, regardless of their location or background.

Now that candidates were coming from a wide-range of backgrounds, not all of them had experience interviewing with big tech companies. The engineering hiring process includes up to six different interviews including behavioral and technical conversations and could be overwhelming for a candidate not used to this type of process. The team wanted to create content to help candidates prepare—and be successful—in all of them.
In the past, candidates were provided with text documents sharing interview tips that were written by recruiters. In this next iteration, they wanted to elevate the material by providing something more technical, engaging, and reflective of who the engineers would work with once they were hired.
Solution

Dropbox created a suite of interview prep videos for engineering candidates featuring hiring managers and employees who had been involved in the evolution of the interview process.

Each video peeled back the layers on what interviewers may ask, why they’re asking those questions, and advice for candidates to present their experience and knowledge in the best way possible. The videos also intended to give insight into company culture and why it’s exciting to work on technical challenges at Dropbox.
Eleven employees were interviewed across three Dropbox locations to create four videos based on each interview type: All-Around, Coding, Deep Dive, and Architecture. The project also included a female engineering leader spotlight video and general engineering culture content. 
The conversations were unscripted and allowed employee storytellers to genuinely share their insight and experiences, making the content authentic and relatable. The videos deliver highly complex information in an accessible way.
The content is also infused with the Dropbox brand, using the file interface Dropbox users know and love to move each video along to the next interview tip.
Watch the Dropbox engineering culture video here.
Results

Dropbox launched a portal where candidates can see where they are in the process and access interview prep materials. Every engineering candidate can now easily find these videos to help set them up for success.

The videos have been extremely helpful for candidates while also giving recruiters high-quality resources they can share in the hiring process. In just three months since launching, the videos were viewed a collective 1,900 times by candidates who are being actively interviewed by the company. 
By focusing its content efforts near the bottom of the candidate funnel, Dropbox is leveling the playing field for all engineering candidates. Providing technical tips, general interview advice, and an overview of the engineering culture is helping candidates better share their expertise and find their fit within Dropbox. 
Explore the content

Watch some of the videos on the Dropbox YouTube channel: