Sanchit signed up with us last August. He initially interviewed for a job that he didn't end up getting, but our interviews are reusable with other roles that hire with us. Around the new year, we reached out with another job, and this one did work out. Sanchit is now a founding full-stack engineer for Fetchfox, a startup working on AI-backed web scraping.

We asked him if he'd be willing to talk with us a little about his experiences with Otherbranch; that call is transcribed here. The transcript has been lightly edited for flow and clarity.

Rachel [Founder/CEO]: Hi Sanchit! Congratulations on the new job, and thanks for taking the time for a call with us.

To start, can you tell everyone reading a bit about yourself - your professional background coming in, where you were before working with us, that kind of thing?

Sanchit [who just got a job]: Yeah, of course! Happy to talk.

So, I'm originally from India; I did my Bachelor's back home, graduated in 2020, and I was part of the first COVID batch. So I had a delayed graduation and all that. Crazy times really.

Rachel: Not a good time to graduate!

Sanchit: Yeah. Right out of college, I started working as a software engineer for an American company called National Instruments, which is based in Austin, Texas, I think. So I worked there for almost a little less than two years and then I decided to go for a Master's. I came to the US, did my masters in computer science from Purdue University, and that's when I started job hunting.

Job hunting is completely different here in the United States. Back home, when you graduate, your university kind of helps you in getting that first job. Companies come to campus instead of you going online submitting a bunch of applications. [This is done in the US, too, but has become less common in the hostile job market of 2022-2025.]

Here, you have to sort of put yourself there and network. I wasn't used to that, and I had to sort of step out of my comfort zone - I did go to a lot of networking events, apply to a million jobs, changed my resume for each job, blah blah blah, and it just wasn't working out. And at one point I was just like, fine, I'll - I should just go back home because at this point it doesn't make sense anymore. It had been six or seven months and I was still searching. I'd even had two offers rescinded; pretty good ones, too.

So I was like it's not working out, I'm just going to go back home. But then funnily enough through one of the communities that I joined at the time called Code and Coffee - I think you must know about it?

Rachel: Yeah, it was actually recommended to me by someone else I talked to who was looking for a job.

Sanchit: Yeah, so through their Discord, I got to know about Otherbranch. I don't know - I think it was your message or someone from Otherbranch? I don't remember exactly, but I just went on the website.

So I thought, what the hell, just sign up. One more application to fill out, right?

Rachel: Sounds like things weren't going very well for you before?

Sanchit: No, not at all. I mean, sponsorship was a big issue. Like I said, I had two job offers, but then they were like, we don't really want to sponsor. They didn't really say it, but you can figure it out from how people talk. So, I was like, it's fine. It's not a big deal, I can get a good job back home. But this Otherbranch thing came up and I was like okay, let's try it out.

Rachel: Were you expecting anything in particular? Or was it literally just another application?

Sanchit: No, I mean nothing at all - it was just another application to fling out into the void. I completely forgot about it at first, just like any other application. I think it was in August [2024, about six months before this interview] and my visa was going to expire soon. I was doing this internship at the time, so, I just thought, I'm going to enjoy it and then go back home. But then I got that email from you that "we have this opportunity that you might be interested in."

Rachel: Right, yeah, we ended up reaching out to you first for a different job that didn't work out.

Sanchit: Yeah, I think some crypto company in New York.

Rachel: And a different remote role.

Sanchit: Yeah. So when that didn't work out, I was like, it's the years of experience that everyone's asking for. I don't have it, and the market's changed, so fine. But I think around the new year, you emailed again, and that was it. This time it did work out, and it was so fast! I mean everything happened in a couple of weeks. So yeah, it was quite an amazing experience to be honest. Out of nowhere - I wasn't expecting it.

Rachel: Glad we could help!

Can you sort of summarize for people reading what the experience was like with us, from the perspective of someone who's coming in not knowing what it's like?

Sanchit: Yeah, so if I start at the beginning, the interview - you have that example, that minesweeper thing on your website, right? I just went through that, and I was like, yeah, I can do this. It's not that difficult, maybe I can crack the interview.

The [Otherbranch] interview was the best part. Everything was just no-nonsense. "Okay this is the interview, this is what we're going to do, and these are the services that we offer," and that was it.

I mean, I remember I've never been so happy after an interview [as I was] after I did the Otherbranch one. I was like, even if I don't get a job, I know that I can code, at least they could see that.

Rachel: Interesting. Before you even got your results, you felt good coming out of it?

Sanchit: Yeah. I mean, I thought I'd bombed the second part but the first and third parts were really good.

Rachel: You mentioned "nonsense" earlier. What kind of nonsense do you usually run into?

Sanchit: I've been through - even for big tech companies, just scheduling that first interview. You go back and forth, email this, email that, select a slot, and then more often than not they delay the interviews. "Oh, we don't have time right now, we'll do this later." And then a week later, two weeks later, this keeps going on. I recently got a call from Amazon after applying there ten months ago!

And once you get an interview, there's no feedback for weeks. I think that's the worst. The fact that you have put in so much effort into preparing for the interview, then you give the interview and then that's it. Radio silence. No one really responds to you. They go to all these no-reply emails, and you can't reach out to anyone. It's messed up. I don't know if it's always been like that, but it's what I hear from all my friends as well.

Rachel: Yeah, companies aren't really incentivized to give you feedback. They already decided they didn't want to hire you, so they don't care at all anymore.

Sanchit: And again, that was the refreshing part [about Otherbranch]. I got the results immediately, and also there was detailed feedback about okay, this is what you need to improve on. That was really important, because you can figure out what you need to study for further interviews for the job opportunities. Not just a generated rejection email with hey we don't think you're a good fit.

Rachel: Was there anything specific you thought was useful in the feedback? You might not remember, it was a while ago, but…

Sanchit: No, I do remember the feedback. Honestly, I still have that PDF. And I think the language was just informal and very casual. "I like this part, but maybe you can improve in this part." It's just a normal conversation, not like something formal, something to be scared of. No "my god, the interviewer didn't like this part, what am I going to do?" I didn't feel that, just "maybe I need to study this, I don't know about this." So that was good.

Rachel: Yeah, a lot of places approach interviews from this perspective of a lot of weird power games that are totally unnecessary.

Sanchit: And in most interviews, it's like you're expected to know the optimal solution right away. You just have to pretend that you're trying to figure it out. we can try this, we can try that. But mostly interviewers are just looking for people who can just sort of solve any Leetcode question in 20 minutes. You're not really really learning anything, but just grinding Leetcode every day. But in that way also, [Otherbranch] was different. It's not like some trick question or some puzzle where if you don't know it you're out.

Just getting what you expected from the practice problem on the website was again something different. Because in normal interviews you have no idea what you're going to expect. So here it was like we're going to ask something like this like step-by-step question. If you get to this point, you're ok, if not, then you just have to study more. Everything is straightforward, everything is just out there. You know what to expect.

Rachel: Any complaints about the process? Stuff we could do better?

Sanchit: Honestly, I loved it right from the beginning. The interview was great, everything was quick, the fact that you do all the work to get companies to talk to us…I think that's the hardest part. It's everything an engineer wants - especially a person like me who's not like a very social guy. That's great.

Rachel: How's the new job working out?

Sanchit: It's reminded me how much I like Typescript [laughter]. They use vanilla JavaScript. But I'm also learning quite a bit. They're working on this web scraping tool, right, so you go on there and say you want a list of emails from some real-estate company and it gives you a CSV. So I'm working on this feature where you can export to different places, a Snowflake database, Google Sheets, and other stuff.

Rachel: One of the first things I wrote down [when I was first thinking of starting Otherbranch] was "be a place for weird introverts." There's just so much being left on the table there.

Sanchit: Keep up with that. I love that.

Rachel: What about for a company that is thinking about hiring with us? Anything you'd say to them?

Sanchit: Well, if you want great candidates, this is the place to go. And it's a clean, no-nonsense approach. For startup owners it's just about saving time, right?

Rachel: Time, yeah, but one of the things founders struggle with a lot is finding people who have the right attitude for startups. People talk about "Founder Mode" or whatever, but setting that aside, you have to be the kind of person who will just Do The Thing, and that's a surprisingly rare trait.

That about does it for the structured stuff I had. Anything else you want to say for the record?

Sanchit: I just want to say thank you. Because like I said, I was really struggling and it was just - at that point my confidence was shot. I was like "maybe I'm not good enough to work in the tech industry," honestly. I can I know that I can code, but maybe the standards have changed. So ultimately it was getting that confidence back up.

Rachel: Ah, well, thank you. I appreciate it!

Thanks for talking with me, and good luck with the new job! Just remember, : any is your friend.

Sanchit: Yeah, I'm getting used to it. Bye, and thank you so much!