I was contacted by a recruiter through LinkedIn and scheduled a technical phone screen.

I was honest with the interviewer and told him I had seen the first problem in past interviews. He told me it didn't matter, and I went ahead with the implementation. I was very familiar with it, so I wrote it in 10 minutes.

Then, he asked me a second problem. This one was a bit harder, and I took some time to think about it. I started to tell him my thought process, but as I was writing, I began to stutter. I believe this made him lose focus on my code, and I noticed he was not actually following me anymore.

After some time, I was able to complete the problem. He just told me it was okay. I'm pretty sure he didn't understand my implementation and was just playing along with me, even though it worked.

My advice for interviewers is to actually engage with the candidate. Otherwise, they'll just make you feel ignored and think you're wasting both parties' time.

Even though I solved the two problems, I received a rejection email after a few days. I asked the recruiter for any feedback, but as usual, they don't reply.

• Matching parenthesis

• WordDistanceFinder