Had my Retool recruiter phone screen yesterday for a new grad SWE position. 30 minutes on the dot. Going to write this up because when I searched for "Retool recruiter screen" I found basically nothing useful.
First: it's not a technical screen. It's a real conversation. The recruiter was friendly and moved quickly.
Here's roughly how the time broke down:
5 min intro. She introduced herself, gave a one-paragraph summary of the role, confirmed I was targeting full-time, not internship.
10 min background walk-through. She asked me to walk her through my resume. Not read it, walk through it. She stopped me at one project and asked what the hardest technical problem was. It wasn't deep but she wanted to see I could articulate it clearly.
5 min motivation questions. Why Retool. Why now. What kind of engineering work do you want to do in the next two years. She was listening for whether I'd done any research on the product.
5 min logistics. Current status (other offers, timelines), visa situation (I'm on OPT so this came up), location flexibility. Retool has a SF HQ and they wanted to know if I was open to hybrid there. I said yes.
5 min my questions. She answered two questions and then said she'd have feedback to the hiring team within a few days.
She asked one curveball that surprised me: "What's something in Retool's product you think could be better?" It caught me off guard. I mentioned something about the onboarding for new admin users which I'd actually experienced when my internship used Retool. She seemed to like the specificity.
Feedback loop was fast. Got an email three days later with a move to the next round (a 45-min technical screen).
If you're prepping: know the product, have one or two concrete things you noticed using it, and be ready to talk through your timeline especially if you're on any kind of visa. They ask.