The interview process started professionally but ended unprofessionally. Overall, the experience was good, but it could be better.

I was initially contacted by a recruiter who forwarded my details to the Capital One recruitment team. After a week, I received a call from a Capital One recruiter. This recruiter cleverly stated that I had expressed willingness to accept a salary in the same or slightly higher range as previously discussed with the initial recruiter, which was not the case. Be careful of this tactic.

A telephonic round followed, covering Java basics and web services. This went well, and I received a call the same day to schedule a face-to-face interview at their premises.

They have four rounds of interviews: two behavioral, one skills assessment, and one job fit.

Behavioral rounds were easy and straightforward. I was asked about various situations I had encountered, how I handled them, and the outcomes.

Technical rounds, however, felt inadequate for assessing skills. Despite currently working as a senior developer and applying for a similar position, I was asked questions outside my skillset.

The job requirement, as stated, was for someone well-versed in Java, Spring, Hibernate, and web services. Yet, the questions in the first technical round were primarily architectural and beyond my expertise.

The interviewer for the job fit round seemed unfamiliar with web services, merely reading questions from a laptop.

In the combined 1.5 hours of two technical rounds, I was not given a single programming challenge, design pattern challenge, or any typical technical interview question.

Asking for the difference between HashMap and TreeMap is not an expected question for a senior Java developer with 10 years of experience during a face-to-face interview.

Although the role was for someone who knows and worked on Spring, Hibernate, and web services (REST and SOAP), the questions I was asked were mostly from:

• Non-blocking algorithms
• Architectural design for large-scale applications using non-blocking queue systems, pipes, etc.
• How HashMap works in Java.