Applied online and had a good co-op experience with one of the core engineering groups of the company. Three and a half years later, I decided to apply for a senior role, even though the company went through a series of layoffs and was really struggling to grow.

I was contacted by a recruiter after a couple of weeks and talked to the hiring manager, who was friendly and brought me onsite.

So far so good. After three and a half hours of interviewing, I was contacted by the recruiter saying the team had decided to "move forward" with me. I was asked to provide three references the following day by the recruiter. Thanks to three of my former colleagues who were kind enough to provide feedback and respond to interviewers' questions.

Now on to the bad part. The hiring manager went on vacation. The saying, "all good things happen on vacation," may not be applicable here. After getting back from vacation, the manager decided to interview an internal candidate. The recruiter reached out saying I was the lead "external" candidate. This smelled fishy to me.

A couple of weeks after follow-ups (I have no idea why I did them), the recruiter said the team decided to go with an internal candidate.

Advice to the company/recruitment:

• Fix your hiring process.
• Respect candidates and their references.
• Only ask for references if you are sure about candidates (respect everyone's time).
• Figure out if the position is internal or external early in the process; this obviously impacts candidacy. No external candidate would ever compete with a quick internal move.

As much as this reflects the situation of management within the company, good luck to Akamai in trying to attract tech talent. Another recruiter from the same company already reached out asking if I am available in the job market. I will have to be out of my mind to give this company another chance, honestly, considering I have already served with the company.

1. How does the internet work?
2. How to parse a large file with millions of entries?
3. Some other questions made up by interviewers during the interview (to which they did not have clear expectations).