Apparently, the challenge begins before the interview. Step one is to work out whether you're speaking to HR or an engineer. Get it wrong, and you may spend the first half of the conversation translating technical concepts into plain English instead of demonstrating your technical depth.

The invite mentioned technical questions, but the overall framing suggested an HR screening. If it's an engineering assessment, simply say so. Candidates shouldn't have to play "Guess the Interviewer" before deciding whether to explain a JDBC batch callback or just say, "it batches database writes."

The interview format also changed unexpectedly. The first technical question was delivered via chat, while subsequent questions switched to verbal discussion without explanation. That inconsistency made it difficult to understand what the interview was actually assessing.

If the intention is to discourage AI assistance, that's a reasonable objective. But the interview should be designed around that from the outset, whether through an onsite interview, a supervised assessment, or by making the format clear in advance. Candidates shouldn't have to reverse-engineer the interview process while being interviewed.

One final touch: I received the Candidate Experience survey before receiving the interview outcome. An impressively efficient feedback loop, just not necessarily in the order most candidates would expect.

Questions on project experience and scalability