Recruiter contacted me through LinkedIn. I forwarded my resume, which was placed on a list and selected by the Engineering Team.

The team members contacted me directly. There was no HR or recruiter intervention in the whole process, which I liked.

Phone screen covered basic networking and testing methodology concepts. I was selected for an onsite interview.

The onsite interview was conducted by three senior engineers, all in the same room. It was largely divided into two parts:

• The first part involved debugging a customer field scenario for a networking system test bug, along with clarifying protocol concepts as I debugged.
• The second part was about debugging a switch performance issue in a test/lab environment.

I performed well in both, and feedback was given instantly.

The manager contacted me a few days later for a talk that lasted about 1.5 hours. They asked everything about my views on teamwork, projects I worked on, the job role, and my fitment.

They asked for five references, including past supervisors, which I provided.

All references were contacted between two to five days.

Everything was positive so far. Then came a frustrating wait of two weeks plus for "obtaining offer approval." After two weeks and repeated emails, I received the shocking email that "unfortunately, no offer can be made at this point." I was very disappointed. They should have been upfront if there was a concern about paying a higher salary or if there had been a hiring freeze, etc.