Weird experience with HR. It took them two months to set up the first technical interview.

The first question from HR was: "What is your salary expectation?" It was an odd situation, not asking about my background first.

The technical interview was a bit scattered and confusing regarding its main objective. The senior engineer kept asking about optimizing model parameters, even though I had to explain multiple times that I hadn’t worked on optimization (hence my model was not optimized) and explained why.

It turns out he had two publications on parameter optimization. This felt unfair, especially as the job description did not mention anything about optimization.

The senior engineer clearly told me, "I will be honest, I like you. I would like to help you for the second round of interviews. Please study a bit more about how to implement an aging mechanism." I took his advice constructively.

However, two days later, I received a generic email stating that my application would not be forwarded. It was a super confusing and weird experience.

From HR:

What is your salary expectation? The first question from the company.

Technical interview:

• What are the aging factors?
• Any optimization experience?