I applied online. The process took 2 weeks.

I applied to two Senior SEM roles and was shortlisted for both. The talent acquisition (TA) rep reached out with a generic email saying she wanted to talk, and asked me to reply with my availability or book a slot via a link - but the email didn't include my name or specify which role the call was about. It did mention some broad themes for the conversation and suggested I review the company website for more information, though the site didn't have anything like a list of leadership principles - just a generic "Life at Capital One" page.

I replied asking for clarification on which role the call related to, so I could better tailor my STAR stories. She didn't clarify, and instead said we could just "have a conversation" about both roles. When the scheduled time arrived, she was 10 minutes late for what was supposed to be a 30-minute call.

After introductions, it wasn't really a conversation at all - she had a handful of behavioral/management questions, but for each one she'd start to read it aloud, then pause and say "I'm just going to paste it into the Zoom chat." From there, she'd simply paste the question and wait for my verbal response. There was no real dialogue, even when I tried to engage her further.

Despite her title being "Technical Recruiter," she seemed out of her depth and unable to discuss the roles in any depth. She also threw in a management-style question that had nothing to do with any of the themes mentioned beforehand. Overall, the process felt unprofessional and disjointed. For context, I was interviewing in parallel with AWS and ended up receiving an L6 SDM offer there - so it was surprising that this recruiter didn't think I was even strong enough to pass a screening call.

Tell me about a time you had to coach a senior engineer to improve their team collaboration skills.