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Working at Crossover | Overview

7–9 minutes

In this post, I have tried to cover the different questions that I get
regarding working with Crossover. After you have gone through
this article, if you still have questions, please feel free to reach out
to me on LinkedIn with your specific query and I’d be happy to
answer it for you. However, please be sure to read this post
completely and explore all the resources that have been mentioned
in it.

Available Roles & Application Process

1. Navigate to Crossover’s website [Navbar > Join Crossover >

Current Openings], you’ll see the different roles that they’re hiring
for at the moment.

2. Go through the titles of the roles, see which ones fit your

profile/skillset.

3. Read the detailed Job Description, specifically the Candidate

Requirements section.

4. If you’re not fully sure that you are eligible for the role, apply for it
anyway, as the very first step in your application is the Basic Fit
test. It takes 10-20 seconds to fill and within 30 seconds it would
let you know if you’re eligible to apply for the role or not.
 5. The next step is the Cognitive Aptitude Test (CCAT), coupled with
a Spoken English Proficiency Test. (More details on the CCAT
below).

6. Other than that, there might be role specific tests , which

shouldn’t take more than 30-60 minutes to complete. Note: You
only have to complete these tests once and it would apply for all
the other roles that you apply to.

7. The next part is Real Work, which would test your domain
knowledge. These tasks would be role specific; I’ve seen a
minimum of one and a maximum of three real work assignments
for different roles over time. Most of these are not timed (from what
I’ve seen), and they give you a very nice, long description of what
to expect in that particular assignment. So just read through that,
see if you’d like/need to revise anything before attempting it, then
go ahead and do the assignment.

8. Once you clear the real work assignment(s), the hiring manager
will review your complete profile and if you seem like a good fit,
they’d invite you for an interview.

9. If you’ve cleared all the previous steps on your own, the interview
shouldn’t really be much of an issue for you. Just don’t do any
major blunders and you should be fine.

10. Clearing the interview gets you the offer, and before joining you
have to re-take the CCAT test, only this time, it would be
proctored. So, if you used a calculator, or cheated in any way
previously, you’d basically have your offer rescinded.

11. That’s all!

Note: Once you apply for a role, these steps appear on the portal
as well.
 Criteria Cognitive Aptitude Test (CCAT Test)

I cannot really provide much guidance on this part in terms of the

practice that you can do because I personally did not really have
to, so my research in this area is limited. However, I will try to give
some general guidelines – if anyone else has cleared this stage
through targeted preparation, I’d appreciate it if you share the path
you followed and I’ll add that in this post. Alternatively, you can just
comment that below.

That said, here’s some key points:

• You get 12 minutes (IIRC) to attempt 50 questions. From what I’ve

noticed, this is the rough scale:
• 4 stars > 35+ marks.

• 5 stars > 40+ marks.

• 6 stars > 45+ marks.

• Each role would have a different requirement for the number of

stars.

• Mindfulness and focus really matters in this one. Best to do it on a

day and time when you’re fully relaxed and haven’t done any other
mind-numbing activity.

• Question types include: Basic Mathematics, English & puzzles.

• Be fast. Don’t think you know the answer straight away and it’d
likely take you more than 30 seconds to get it? Make a guess
move on. Try to attempt all 50 questions in the allotted time.

• To add to the above point, questions are ordered randomly (not in

increasing order of difficulty), so it’s very likely that if you’re only
 able to attempt 45 questions for instance, the last 5 questions
might have been easy but you never got to them because you
spent too much time on a hard question (hard = would take more
than 30 seconds to solve).

• Try to find some generic tips & tricks for ‘quick math questions’.
Example: 12 is 20% of what number (x is y% of what number). You
can solve that in your head quite quickly by doing x100/y |
(12100)/20 = 60. This is just an example. Series, sequences, basic
algebra, these are some of the topics that I remember being
touched in this exam, so just do a quick 20-30 minutes revision of
these.

• TAKE the test. The best way to know which areas you need to
improve on and what to expect on the test, is to take the test. They
let you take it twice before blocking you for the next 3 or 6 months.
Once you have taken the test, I’m sure you can pinpoint which
areas you struggled in (took more time) and can look for online
resources where you can practice similar questions.

Work Environment:

• Varies from team to team and company to company. But my

general observation has been that as long as you’re doing quality
work, you would be fine.

• Your colleagues are going to be very very smart people (they went
through the same tiring/challenging process that you did), so you
always have to be delivering your best work to keep your
performance metrics in check.

• There is a lot of autonomy – little to no micromanagement. You get

 constructive feedback/coaching for areas where you can improve
by your Manager, if and when needed, in an asynchronous
manner.

• Shift requirements can vary from team to team.

• You’re not bothered past your shift timings, for most roles that I
know of at least.

• If you’re on holidays (btw those are unpaid, you get paid for the
work you do), there are very low chances that you would be
bothered at all. I personally never have been, IIC. Again, I
obviously haven’t worked, or talked to people, in all the roles. But
one thing that I have observed is that if you are requested to check
in on a holiday, it would be for emergency cases only, where you
are the only resource that is equipped to handle the situation.

• Fully remote – no time wasted traveling.

• Pro/Con (can vary based on your perception): 8 hour shift means 8

full hours of productivity. In an office environment, you might be in
office for 8/10 hours, but you’d likely be doing actual productive
work for maybe 4-5 hours tops. Don’t expect that here.

• Compensation is as advertised. If it says $50/hr on the portal,

that’s exactly what you would be getting. Payment cycles are
weekly, not monthly.

• You’re expected to treat this as full-time and log 40 hours each

week, minus any (un)planned holidays.

Conclusion:

I’ve read some really bad reviews on Glassdoor, but did not really
find them to be true for pretty much all the teams that I’ve had a
chance to collaborate with, but of course, experiences can vary
based on perceptions so feel free to ask other people directly.
Lastly, I’ve only covered the basics here, if you have any specific
questions, drop them in the comments below or message me on
LinkedIn. I’ll either include them in the article so that other people
can benefit from them in the future, or see if I can schedule a
meeting with you if it requires detailed guidance/can’t be covered
properly over text. P.S: Read the FAQs on their website, they cover
a lot of common queries quite well.