A Capital One recruiter contacted me via a message on LinkedIn.

He suggested I could be a good fit for two different positions: DevOps Engineer and SRE.

After reviewing both job requisitions, the requirements (based on my industry experience) seemed to be reversed.

No big deal, and I agreed to set up a phone interview for both positions on separate days.

Both phone interviews went extremely well, in my opinion.

Both managers seemed to want me to come in for an in-person meeting and said they would let the recruiter know.

The recruiter then informed me that I would need to take an online assessment first.

This assessment was broken into three parts:

• A personality test (e.g., "How well do you work with others who disagree with you?")
• A reading comprehension test (read a short 4-5 sentence paragraph, then answer questions that try to make you infer certain things not actually in the paragraph)
• A math skills test

The comprehension and math assessments reminded me heavily of the SATs in high school (I've been out of high school for almost 15 years), even down to being time-boxed (maximum time on each question is roughly 1 minute 30 seconds).

Total time spent on the assessments was about 2 hours.

What these reading and math questions have to do with a DevOps or SRE role is beyond my understanding.

I waited until the day after the second phone interview to complete the assessment, which was at the end of the day.

The next morning, I received a call from the recruiter who stated they would be passing on my application for both positions.

His reason was that I was not qualified for the first position (DevOps Engineer) and that he hadn't heard from the SRE manager yet.

Note that this was immediately after I took the assessments, not the phone interviews.

The phone interviews were very positive, and both managers seemed eager to get me in for a formal in-person interview.

If I did poorly on the SAT-like tests, why not just be honest with me?

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