I applied for a Senior Software Engineer position in Europe in 2019. I was contacted three months after submitting my application via the web platform.

I had a phone interview with the hiring manager, followed by an on-site interview. The hiring manager and the rest of the team were very nice and polite.

In contrast, I found the recruiter quite unprofessional. I emailed him a week after my interview, but received no response. I sent another email a week later, again with no reply. After three weeks, I called him. He claimed to be in a meeting and promised to call me back later, which he never did. A week after that, I called again. He informed me that they had hired someone else for the position and seemed surprised that I hadn't been notified.

I wonder why he was so surprised, given that he had ignored all my emails. The other recruiters involved in the process also did not perform their duties properly. They provided an address for the on-site interview that was impossible to find without further clarification.

As a reason for rejection, the recruiter stated they felt other candidates had more practical experience in iOS development. I find this hard to believe, as my experience with this recruiter suggests he might have offered a generic reason to dismiss me. If this feedback is indeed true, it's irritating that my iOS experience was barely explored during the interview. The few technical iOS questions I was asked, I answered smoothly. Instead, I was primarily asked to describe my previous experience and projects. I focused on the most challenging projects I had recently worked on, which, although related to the job description, were not iOS-related. Had they inquired about my iOS experience, I could have discussed it extensively, as I have four apps in the App Store, two of which are considerably complex.

Describe the state of an app, memory management, weak vs. strong references, static vs. dynamic libraries.