I interviewed quite a while ago, but this just came to my mind, and I want to share this experience so that candidates can mentally prepare. I think my experience can provide one of the reasons why some positions are not easily filled.

I was reached out by a recruiter. The job description was for a senior role, but the recruiter mentioned they hire juniors as well. The role was for a specific team.

I received an online test. Both questions were easy; actually, it was the easiest Amazon test I'd done.

Then came the phone screen. This is where the problems began. The interviewer started with a very brief introduction, then asked me to introduce myself. I didn't have much experience to talk about, and time was tight (40 minutes for coding and 15 minutes for behavioral), so I finished my intro in 2-3 minutes. The interviewer looked at me with a confused and disappointed face. That didn't bother me, but he just didn't seem as friendly as other interviewers.

Then he went straight into coding. He pasted the questions on the whiteboard, and I started reading. The question asked me to do A first, then do B. I didn't understand what A was, so I highlighted it with my mouse and asked if he could explain. He didn't really explain A but explained more or less about B. I insisted on asking about A again, but he just didn't understand me. I didn't want to waste more time, so I decided to write B first. I wrote a bit, then realized I had to have A. And Google wasn't allowed. So I asked him in another way. I said, 'Can you give me a hint about the method to use for A because I'm not familiar?' He said I could just assume I already had the output of A.

But I needed to know the type of A's output, so I asked him again to explain what A was. Then he simply kept quiet. He remained quiet even after I repeated my question. By that time, I finally realized he might have been doing other work in the background and wasn't even looking at the shared whiteboard.

I struggled for a while, and 20 minutes had already passed. He finally started talking proactively. He asked if I understood the question and if anything needed explaining. Yes, now he was asking. So I asked about A again. And now he pasted the method for A on the whiteboard.

I still had 15 minutes left and might have been able to finish. He interrupted me in the last 5 minutes and asked for my overall logic. I think this time he did the right thing to give me a last chance. I had most of the code done, so I explained it. But the problem is, he didn't understand my logic, maybe because he wasn't familiar with a method I used on a map, if I remember correctly. Lastly, I told him the time complexity and asked him to explain it, but again, I failed to explain it in the way he expected.

Next were behavioral questions. I could feel he didn't even want to ask me but was just passing time. He just asked 2 questions and finished.

I could have gotten myself a second chance by giving feedback to the recruiter about this negative experience. But I realized since I was interviewing with the team, the people I met would be the people I would work with. And unless I had no other offers, I really didn't want to work with that interviewer.

Introduce yourself.

Something about IO.