Interview Process

I was contacted by a staffing agency around the end of July for the SDET2 position at PhonePe, Bangalore. I was interested and proceeded with the first round of online coding on the DoSelect portal. Upon completing the round, my results came at the end of September, and my second round was scheduled for October 1st. I received my second-round results in a couple of days. The 3rd and 4th rounds were completed in mid-October, and the 5th round was completed the day after.

What Happened After Completing 5 Rounds?

After completing five rounds, I didn't get my results for more than a day. Since I was under an offer negotiation process with another company, I called the junior HR and asked about the status of my candidature with PhonePe. As discussed earlier, my interview process consisted of only five rounds. Since I had completed all five rounds and there were no more rounds to go, I contacted the junior HR. She wanted to know whether I was currently serving my notice period. Since I had yet to drop my papers and had not locked in any offer so far, I asked her about my interview status, as I was expecting it the previous day. She told me that she would update me by the end of the day.

Meanwhile, the Senior HR called me and informed me that all five round results were positive and I had cleared them. He mentioned there would be one more round, which would be the final round with another Hiring Manager. I was surprised because nobody had told me this when I asked about the entire interview process. Anyway, I wanted to clear this interview due to the efforts I had put in, so I agreed and scheduled it for Friday afternoon.

On Wednesday, I did not receive the invite for the 6th round after the call. On Thursday, I was waiting for it. The staffing agency responded but did not resolve the issue. On Thursday, after 4:30 PM, I reached out to the junior HR, and she told me I could expect a call around 5:30 PM. At 5:40 PM, I called her because I had not received any call regarding the same. She flatly told me that my position had gone on hold. I was really disappointed to hear that after clearing five rounds; this seemed impossible. I just listened to what she told me and hung up.

This was running through my mind, and luckily, I received a call from the Senior HR (I had already called him, and he hadn't picked up previously). I asked him what the reason was for my position to go on hold. The HR explained that due to internal organizational changes across several levels, this particular position had gone on hold, and that was why they hadn't scheduled my 6th round. I asked him upfront if the panel had decided to put me on hold because I would be receiving an offer from another company. The HR disagreed completely and told me I would get a call within two weeks maximum; if not, they would stop the interview process.

I am writing this in mid-November, and no one has spoken to me so far. I don't know what the use of clearing five rounds was. Surprisingly, the same Senior HR called my friend for the SDET2 position!

What More Can You Say Here?

Red Flags

• The Hiring Manager in the 5th round told me, "We're interested to work from the office only because we need to see what kind of reaction people give when they're allocated tasks. Even our CTO encourages us to come to the office." Seriously? Why do you care about an employee's expressions if the job is done and things go live on the expected date?
• The same HM was stating that by December, they were going to have 100% of the workforce coming to the office. I don't know if they were aware of the second wave threats.

Conclusion

• Everyone is struggling during the pandemic situation. I totally agree if your organization is changing and the designations and titles for each role are changed across the company, but why couldn't you tell me that this position was going on hold after a maximum of three rounds? That too, I had to run from pillar to post to know the status of this interview every time.
• If the position was on hold, how could you call my friend for the same position the following week? When all of my rounds were positive, I should have been the one to get the call, right? It's a contradiction to the core!
• Despite having a fever and office pressure, I attended each interview with passion and hard work. This "on hold" culture in the current situation is highly disappointing!

Round 1: Online [DoSelect] Coding Round

• https://leetcode.com/problems/valid-anagram/
• Problem on an Array which needs to be solved based on the index and array length.
• Problem on a Binary Tree.

Round 2: F2F Problem Solving

• https://leetcode.com/problems/group-anagrams/
• Add all the numbers (not digits) in a given string - Welcome123To456India789 [123+456+789]

Round 3: Automation Framework, Test Activities & Problem Solving

• How do you create a test plan?
• What are the major areas to be taken care of while creating the test strategy?
• Test Cases for YouTube search. [UI and API Level]
• Negative test cases for the video search.
• How will you validate the YouTube video suggestion for a user in the UI Automation? [Populate few video searches as pre-condition and then automate the validation]
• Questions and follow-ups on TestNG Groups.
• A detailed walkthrough of my Automation Framework. [Data Driven]
• Custom Dashboards built for Product Metrics.
• Allure or Extent Reports in Automation Framework.
• Selenium WebDriver with JavaScript Executor and other topics like Alerts.
• Why I chose a particular class as Abstract and when did I go for Interface in my Automation Framework?
• https://leetcode.com/problems/add-strings/

Round 4: Functional Testing and Product Architecture

• Test search functionality in WhatsApp for Chats, Status, and Calls.
• Explain the complete product architecture (as much as you can remember) in all the companies you've worked in. [I'm not joking, I explained what all I worked]
• Explain the complete product architecture with API calls & Microservices level from entry to exit of the user in the current company.
• What's the last time you disagreed with your developer? [Any company in your career]
• What did you do when you missed a deadline?
• Which bug of yours stopped a release?

Round 5: Hiring Manager Discussion

• Asked about my product architecture again with different test scenarios entry and exit criteria.
• Asked about my build acceptance and test plans for payment components.
• Why I'd chosen a Data-Driven Framework for validating APIs?
• Culture Fitment and Behavioural.