CV was sent through the website. The recruiter was very quick to reply and quite flexible in scheduling the first round call. This was the only positive and smooth experience with them.

I was told it would be a 30-minute chat about my recent experience, so I was asked not to worry about preparing anything.

When the call started, I couldn't see the interviewer's face. He put his laptop on his knees, and only his chin was visible. I was too nervous to ask him to adjust his camera; moreover, I thought it would be impolite of me. But he must have seen himself in the corner of the screen!

The call started okay, as expected. We walked very briefly through my most recent job and the technologies used there. After that, I was asked more about technologies and stacks from my previous jobs (2 years ago, 5 years ago). The questions got deeper into the details, some of which I couldn't answer precisely, giving only short descriptions (technology X was used to build feature Y). I was saying I needed to revise X to answer in more detail. Such answers were wrongly perceived as if I didn't know the correct answer or as if I had never used technology X. Here, I must say they didn't set my expectations well when saying I didn't need to prepare anything.

Then he switched to algorithmic questions and questions on simple data structures. This was even more shocking for me! However, the questions were mostly simple, nothing hardcore, and I answered okay.

The call ended, and I expected some feedback. Having received fast replies from the recruiter about scheduling, I was shocked again when feedback arrived only 3 days later from an email address starting with no-reply@.... It was negative and contained the words 'We thought you had a strong application...'

I realized that this interview was not the best of mine. Expecting a chat about my recent experience, I had no chance to properly show my skills, facing more technology questions than ones related to my experience or soft skills!

I must say, I was expecting to be evaluated for company culture fit, to be asked more about processes (scrum, waterfall, whatever else) and daily routines—soft skills questions, 'tell me when you missed the deadline,' and all that stuff.

Of course, I didn't have much opportunity to show neither my hard nor my soft skills!

From the candidate's perspective, it was a strongly negative experience.