A former colleague reached out to me about an open position at Expedia. I applied online and was contacted after a week or so.

I had one phone screening interview with the HR recruiter and one phone interview with the hiring manager in the first week.

A week after that, the recruiter contacted me to arrange the remaining interviews. Since I was based abroad at the time, all were phone interviews. Four phone interviews of about 45 minutes were scheduled:

• One with an engineering director
• Another one with the hiring manager
• Two with technical peers

The meetings with the director and hiring manager were very relaxed. They went through a few problems they were having and how I could help with them.

The first technical interview was relatively easy and focused on main performance engineering standards and processes, with a couple of technical questions about Java.

The second technical interview was focused on functional testing, which is not the position I applied for and about which I have little knowledge. I was asked a few questions about test cases for a theoretical application. With the little knowledge I have in that area, I managed to list a few positive, negative, and non-functional test cases, but explained that this was not my area of expertise.

Two to three weeks after the interviews, the recruiter contacted me with the offer.

How does the heap work in Java?

List the functional test cases for this theoretical application.

How does garbage collection work in Java?