The interview process is clunky and completely impersonal.

After a recruiter reached out, I was given a calendar link to provide three available slots. You can select up to 3 times, so I did. After a day or so, I received a confirmation email for a time or day which I didn't select — two weeks from my original selection.

Anyways, I went with it, thinking they must be busy handling loads of applications.

The interview day comes, and I join via the provided CodeSignal link. Five minutes in, and nobody is there. Finally, one of the two interviewers shows up and sends a message in the chat, saying the interview had to be cancelled due to "internal issues", whatever that means. Keep in mind I was on video, but the person didn't even bother to join the call to give me an explanation. A little disappointed, I close the call and go on about my day, thinking that someone would reach out to reschedule the interview. That never happened.

After a couple of days, out of curiosity, I emailed the initial recruiter to inquire about what had happened. No explanation was given, but I received another invite in my inbox. I took it as a positive sign and am looking forward to the interview, which is a coding challenge.

The interview day arrives (take two). This time, the interview shows up! After their brief intro, we move on to "ice breaker questions". I thought to myself, "cool, this is going to be fun, they might be asking me about my hobby, interest, passion, or even my favourite framework." Nope! None of that. Instead, the questions turned out to be blatant market research inquiries... I mean, seriously?

I was asked the following:

• What prompted you to respond to our recruiter?
• Are you familiar with Agoda's blog, and have you read any of its articles before?
• What improvements would you suggest for Agoda's products?

This took about 5 minutes. Note that up to this point, nothing about my professional or technical background has been asked.

Considering the fact that I find market research questionnaires particularly irritating, you can imagine how something like this would put you off, especially when you're being gaslighted in an interview setting. Despite the urge to end the call right there, I channel my inner Stoic and press on.

The interviewer kicks off the challenge. The requirements are listed on the page in a BDD format, making everything very clear and straightforward.

Having had enough experience with coding interviews and challenges, I begin by rationalising my approach and writing high-level pseudocode. This also gives me time to go through the provided code. However, the interviewer asks me not to waste time with that and to start writing the solution right away instead. I agree and continue.

The exercise was straightforward (more details below), and I was able to complete it and run its tests successfully within 15 minutes.

For the remaining 40 minutes of the interview, the interviewer asked me indirect questions to assess my knowledge of functional programming concepts and SOLID principles. We jumped from one pattern to the other, and I covered:

• Pure functions
• High-order functions
• Closures (which felt somewhat redundant in a React setup with component functions and locally defined state, but I suppose you have to check that closure box)
• Immutability
• Dependency management (useEffect dep. array)
• Currying

The interview was wrapped up at the hour mark, and I was given the opportunity to ask a couple of questions. Although the interviewer seemed like a decent person, the overall process raised enough red flags for me to decide to withdraw my application. However, I'm still awaiting feedback from my talent acquisition coordinator regarding the supposed interview. It's been almost a week now.

If you're wondering why I took the time to write everything in such detail, it's so you DON'T WASTE yours with it.

Think about it. If that's their hiring process, how would they treat you once you join?

The challenge runs on CodeSignal, which has a layout similar to CodeSandbox but with an additional panel on the left-hand side for instructions.

The task is to complete the functionality of a book app (think of it as your standard to-do app).

Most of the React code is provided, except for the functionality for the "addBook" and "deleteBook" functions.

Follow the user story, and you can't go wrong. Then, be prepared to cover the topics mentioned in the description. Even better, don't apply and save your energy for a company that has a clearer hiring process and respects candidates' time (cough, cough, Atlassian).