I was contacted by a recruiter after applying online. She then scheduled a phone interview where I was asked basic behavioral questions (past projects experience, internship experiences, etc.). After that, she told me I would be contacted if teams were interested.

About a week later, a technical phone screen was scheduled. The phone screen was pretty bad, as my interviewer spent 15 to 20 minutes on behavioral questions, which took away from coding time.

I quickly solved the first question. Then, she asked if I could optimize it. When I said I was thinking quietly, after five seconds she asked what I was thinking. I thought, "Can you allow me to think first?" I've interviewed at almost everyone's favorite major companies, and quietly thinking is never an issue as long as it isn't for five-plus minutes. Even then, they usually offer hints.

I gave an optimized answer, which she seemed okay with. She then asked me about what makes a good hashmap. After that, she asked an interview scheduling problem, which I answered with a solution. However, I did not have enough time to optimize it, since she spent so much time on other things. She then wanted to allocate another ten minutes at the end for questions.

Four days later, I received a soft "It was a difficult decision, but we decided not to move forward."

Overall, I did not like the interview experience. A technical phone screen should prioritize coding and not so many behavioral questions, especially if I already had a behavioral interview before. Were the answers not given to the teams?

You also should not try to stuff so much material into an hour-long window and then punish the candidate, even though you did not allocate enough time for them to properly answer questions.

Given two strings with names and an integer for the time, create a schedule for interviewers and candidates.