The process felt unprofessional from the outset. I received a message from HR on LinkedIn, to which I replied. However, the recruiter then seemed to forget about my response. It was only after I followed up that I received a meeting invite to discuss the role.

Subsequently, I was sent a backend development test, which involved building a simple Spring Boot-based application. The recruiter then sent my code to the hiring manager. After reviewing my profile in detail, and noting my front-end development skills, such as React, the hiring manager requested that I also build a front-end application.

Following these tasks, an interview was scheduled. The questions asked during the interview were vague and lacked specificity.

The outcome of the interview was a rejection. The reason given was a lack of experience in skills I had not mentioned on my resume, specifically Java reflection-based framework development, Spark, and Kafka. I have 15 skills, yet I was rejected for two skills I do not possess and have not listed on my resume.

It's unclear what they saw in my profile during the initial shortlisting if these two skills were so crucial. They could have saved my time and their own by not contacting me and avoiding the need for me to build applications for them.

Completely theoretical Java and Spring-based questions