I applied on a whim while on vacation in Tokyo for the job in Tokyo. Unfortunately, it took them 10 days for the first response; otherwise, we could have had a 1:1 interview in Tokyo, and things might have happened very differently.

I assumed that because Indeed was in the recruiting business, their own recruiting process would be exemplary, but it wasn't. Apart from the initial delay, the recruiter who dealt with me was fantastically nice while I remained a candidate they were interested in hiring, which included the initial filter interview.

They sent you an NDA but told you you don't have to sign it?! I didn't sign it. It's just for the interview process. No secrets about Indeed were ever talked about or communicated. I've interviewed at lots of companies and never had something like this before.

The 60-minute technical interview was a complete disaster. Initially, the interviewers did not seem to know which position I was interviewing for. They seemed to think that I was interviewing for some type of QA position.

No audio was working on the Zoom connection, and the two interviewers wasted 10 minutes trying to fix the problem on their end. Finally, they elected to continue with the interview using Zoom without audio but then calling me from Tokyo to North America by phone for audio. The results were terrible because the audio was very poor quality, and on top of that, the interviewers spoke with heavy foreign accents and limited vocabulary. So, I must have asked them to repeat sentences about 50 times... it was very painful.

Before the interview, the blurb said, "We want to evaluate how you solve the problem, so you should ask clarifying questions and treat the interview as a collaboration between you and them." But during the interview, there was little or no collaboration, and it felt more authoritarian, with some interrogation mixed in. At one point, they didn't understand what I was talking about and told me to focus on the task rather than try to engage with me. This was the lowest point of the experience.

Personally, if I were in their shoes, I would have re-scheduled the meeting for when the audio was working and of better quality. But they just battled through regardless of the consequences.

The task itself seemed too simple for the job title I applied for, and it was possible to complete it even within the reduced time. However, they kept asking questions which I could barely acoustically understand. I fielded all questions, but it was like pulling teeth at the dentist.

After the interview, they just ghosted me, which didn't seem professional. Eventually, after 14 days, I made contact asking about the next step, and the recruiter replied without any apology for ghosting me, only adding that the interviewers were quite certain I had failed and there was no question mark over whether they had properly tested my skills!

This was easily the worst interview I have ever had and left me with a terrible opinion about Indeed! And it's really not because they failed me. After the experience, I'm not sure I would want to work for them even if the interview could be repeated, etc. I personally believe that a good interview process should leave the candidate happy and still wanting to work for the employer, even if the interview is failed. This definitely isn't the case with Indeed :-(

Data cleaning task. Take some messy input strings and clean the data so it adheres to some known data.