The worst interview experience I have ever had, and that is counting when a company made me go through six interviews and then only gave me a contract-to-hire position. Brace yourselves; this is a long one because I was considered for three different positions at Capital One.

First, one did a phone screening, then sent a coding test, which I completed over the course of a few days. They then proceeded to ghost me for about two months when I suddenly got a form rejection.

Second, one was a mess from the very beginning, and I should have known not to even get involved. There was a phone screening again, then the recruiter told me I had to submit an online application. However, in the phone screening, I explicitly said I didn't have familiarity with testing, and in the online application, it apparently got thrown out if you marked that you did not have that experience.

So, I didn't hear anything for over a week, and then the recruiter told me to re-apply. She didn't explicitly say that I was barred from an in-person interview until I re-applied, so I thought she was just being slow. After another text message from her, I re-applied and then went to an in-person interview a week later.

The in-person interview went pretty well. I answered the whiteboarding questions correctly, and the only part that was a little odd was the "situational interview" where they asked me to decipher a document that was supposed to show a command-line app for encrypting a file. Also, my old boss, who worked at Capital One for ten years, sent a glowing review to one of the executives, which I figured to be a cherry on top.

The following week, the recruiter texted me saying I missed her phone call. I did not receive a phone call from her. In fact, the day she claimed she called me, I had called her, not the other way around, and her voicemail was full. I texted her back saying I didn't receive a call. She ignored my text.

Three days later, in the morning, she called me out of the blue and told me that they really liked me but I didn't have enough leadership experience. However, because of the glowing review, etc., they really wanted me to apply to some new front-end positions opening up next month, and that I would get to do an expedited process.

Fast forward a month, and I got a call from a new recruiter saying that my old one passed me on to him. He wants me to do a phone screening for another front-end developer position. I asked right away if the process would be expedited as I had been promised. He said no. I decided to go through with it anyway because I did not have any other offers yet.

During the phone screening, I was grilled on my favorite features of ES5 and ES6. When I couldn't name any off the top of my head, the interviewer literally started listing them to me incredulously, like I was the stupidest person on earth. This turned me off pretty bad, but the recruiter convinced me to go forward with an in-person interview, saying that they could match another offer I received.

At the in-person interview, I was not given any kind of coding test, even though it was three hours long. They took me out to lunch, which was nice, but made sure to comment on how the company I received an offer from was clearly inferior to Capital One. There was a behavioral interview and two interviews where they asked me about my past projects and experience.

To be clear, because I already had an offer, I needed them to make a decision that day, which I had made clear to the recruiter, and the recruiter confirmed this with me over text.

An hour later, he called me and said that they wanted me to complete a coding test. He said he didn't know the difficulty of the test and e-mailed it to me.

In the test file, it literally said at the top that the ETA for completing the test was 2-4 days if you work a few hours a day. So, he either didn't bother opening the file out of laziness or lied to me on purpose, hoping I would still do it.

I would have had to basically pull an all-nighter to complete the test without any guarantee that I would even receive an offer at the end of it. Needless to say, I did not do the test because, at that point, I received a second offer and had no reason to bend over backward.

In total, I wasted about 15 hours on Capital One interviews.

Tell me about a time you overcame a challenge.

Describe a time you didn't achieve the results you wanted.

Describe the application(s) you worked on at (a company from resume).

Are you familiar with Agile?

Why would a company like Capital One require encryption?

Do you prefer working alone or on a team?

What is your favorite feature of ES5? ES6?

What is a way in JavaScript to handle API calls in a synchronous manner?