I was contacted by a recruiter after applying online and scheduled a phone interview a month later. The first-round phone interview was with a recruiter for about 30 minutes, followed by an engineering manager for about 45 minutes. We talked about my experience and background, and then I went on to solve two coding problems. Both were extremely easy:

• FizzBuzz
• Reverse a string

I was followed up with almost immediately for an onsite interview. I received a lot of help from HR on booking flights and a hotel, as I was a non-local candidate. Before the date of the onsite interview, I received a description of a small project which I should implement the next day. The project was about simulating an online cloud infrastructure. This was pretty unexpected. Although I had some time to prepare and research for it, I couldn't complete it during the interview in the given time, which was only 1 hour and a half. This was the only technical part of the onsite interview. After a week, I got a phone call with no offer.

I was surprised at how easy it was to get an onsite interview, yet how difficult and unconventional the onsite interview could become. I felt that if the company was looking for a person with hands-on experience, they could perhaps do another round of phone interview before sending candidates onsite.

Implementing a small project which had some concepts that I wasn't familiar with.