I received an internal referral through an employee.

HR contacted me very quickly, and I set up a phone screen.

During my phone screen, an engineer contacted me – a different person than the one initially scheduled. I point this out because he was a JavaScript engineer, and I was interviewing for a backend position.

The engineer called 10 minutes late to a 45-minute interview.

He then proceeded to ask about my background and dive into a coding question.

He asked me a question that seemed very applicable to a JavaScript engineer, but didn't make sense to ask if I wanted to code in Java. It seemed the engineer realized quickly that he hadn't thought his question through, but it was too late at that point. Therefore, for the next 30 minutes, I proceeded to attempt to answer a question that was poorly constructed and not applicable.

On top of this, the interviewer was in a very loud room with a lot of background noise, making it difficult to hear. Additionally, he was constantly talking to another engineer on the call, with whom I imagine he was trying to get advice on how to improve the question.

Furthermore, the call quality became very poor halfway through the interview, and I could barely understand anything he was saying.

All in all, this was a very poor experience, and I hope HR improves its interview process in the future.