This has to be said first: you might be extremely disappointed to discover that a lot of people working at Crunchyroll don't actually care about anime, manga, or Japanese culture. Surprise #1. There are many people from Los Angeles (ex-Hulu employees), people from other big tech companies and to them this is just another job where you try to get "big wins" and "change the way people view media" etc. etc.
Interview process:
- Applied online.
- Contacted by HR, back and forth emails to schedule 1:1 call.
- 1:1 call, lasted about an hour.
- More emails with HR; asked for feedback, scheduled in-person.
- In-person interviews #1: I was there for 5+ hours meeting with 12 people, two at a time. No real break. I find this highly repetitive (how many times can you describe your passion for media and talk about your hobbies and work experience?) and just plain tiring. Honestly I would have preferred meeting all 12 people at once.
- HR follow-up emails about the in-person, scheduled SECOND in-person.
- In-person interviews #2: Less formal than round #1; met with about 1/3 of the same people met the first time, talked about myself again. Good people. Was this second meeting really necessary, though?
- Waited.
- Waited.
- Waited.
- Finally reached out to main point of contact and was informed another candidate was selected. That's fine, but I waited around a week with total radio silence. That was really nerve-wracking.
Overall thoughts:
- You will work your butt off. This is the impression I received from most of the people I interacted with. They live, breathe and eat work and don't sleep, apparently. They take their work on vacation with them (red flag). The in-person conversations I had actually discouraged me a little bit from wanting to continue with the process.
- Hearing "I could give a crap about anime," was frankly shocking. Why do you even work here?!
- The office is great, and in a prime location (Westfield Centre). You walk in and feel the buzzy atmosphere. Dog-friendly.
- Some great people work here. They work hard and really believe in whatever mission they want to achieve. Be very careful about which department you apply for. It's like apples and oranges.