I had applied through the company's career portal and received a call from HR within a few weeks. The position offered was different from the one I had applied for, but they were ready to sponsor an H1B visa for it. The HR representative briefed me about the "power day." I reside in the state where I had applied for the position, so travel and finding the location were very simple for me.

The interview had three components: two behavioral, one case, and one technical.

I had a week to prepare and did not have any prior experience with a four-hour interview. I reviewed multiple experiences on Glassdoor and browsed examples of case interviews. For the technical portion, I relied solely on my experience.

First was Behavior: All questions resembled the ones given by HR. However, the interviewer keenly noted down and questioned the things I spoke about. It was a 45-minute discussion with a seasoned and cool senior architect.

Second was Case: The question was about designing software to handle an automated process – a tool to judge whether a loan can be given to a customer. Topics discussed included parameters, cost, hours to be spent, other options to consider, deadlines, actions for a federal deadline, profits, loss, and break-even. It was a healthy conversation. I made a few silly mistakes, and I was concerned they would affect my selection.

Third was Behavior: Questions were asked in a way that might have required me to contradict some of my earlier statements. I discovered behavior is not easy to handle, but if you speak the truth, you don't have to worry. I was able to share many real-time experiences, and the discussion was satisfying.

Technical: Two interviewers. Topics covered included metadata management, table full refresh, design approaches, a real-time production issue and its solution, normalization, and ETL tool-based questions.