Tough interview, with not much equivalent feedback.

After finishing a simple online assessment, I booked a date two weeks later to allow myself time to prepare.

I was turned down after the first networking and coding interview. The coding question was a bit hard for a network position (LeetCode medium).

I have to say, for this to have been a "New Grad" requisition, the technical questions asked were very high-level.

The interviewer kept asking me questions in depth without guidance, which was very challenging.

The interview began with a brief self-introduction. I was then asked which routing protocol I was most comfortable with, and I chose BGP. The interviewer started with basic BGP questions. His questions were quite generic, which was the main challenge:

• Why can't we use OSPF to connect all systems together?
• What is unique about BGP?
• What is an autonomous system?
• How is routing information exchanged?
• What is the difference between iBGP and eBGP peers?
• How does BGP differentiate between external and internal peers?
• How is a BGP session established?
• How to prevent loopbacks?
• How to control inbound/outbound traffic?
• Is there any inspection before sending a route to a different neighbor, by the sender or receiver?

Given a scenario of experiencing network performance issues such as latency and packet loss:

• What are the possible reasons for these issues?
• What steps can be taken to narrow down the issue?

The coding interview presented an adapted version of the LeetCode "Battleships in a Board" problem, requiring the identification of all battleship coordinates by simulating bomb placements. The interviewer repeatedly probed for solutions to handle multiple scenarios. I spent a considerable amount of time understanding the game's rules, as I had never played it before.