I applied to a bunch of graduate positions on their website. Confusingly, they offered about 12 different positions, all aimed at the same sort of computer science/engineering graduates. They really should cut down the number of roles, as graduates do not really know the difference between them, much less which they want to do or are best suited for.

Most applicants were funnelled into the role of "Applications Developer". I got a call shortly after to plan a phone interview. This call also included a few quick questions about how I found out about the job and my salary expectations (I said €35k and she said they pay more than that to graduates, without getting specific).

There were three stages to the interview:

1. Phone Interview: This was with an engineer and consisted of soft questions. Things like "why did you choose your college degree?", "what do you know about Workday and why do you want to work here?", and "give a 5-minute summary of your studies and experience". There was also a sort of sales pitch about working there and an explanation of what they do. The interview lasted 25 minutes and seemed to be gauging communication skills.

2. UML Tech Test: They were very accommodating and gave a few extra weeks to study. The interview was over Skype with a young engineer (he said he had been working there about 2 years out of college) sharing my screen. The challenge was to design a library system using class diagrams. After doing this, it had to be redesigned to fit some new criteria, and then once more. He wasn't concerned about all the notation being exactly right and comprehensive, just the method of solving the problem. At the end of this interview, for about 10 minutes, I got a rundown of what they do with the interviewer showing his screen to me. He showed me the Expresso software they use and how it works. The interview lasted 50 minutes.

This stage was important as it was here where I lost a lot of interest in taking the job. They tell you that Workday uses its own proprietary language called Expresso. What they DON'T tell you is that Expresso is not a language at all. Programming with it is like programming in Scratch or making an interface in NetBeans. You don't write code; you just come up with the design. Workday has 2 main development teams: Application Developers USE this system to make software for their clients, and the regular programmers WRITE this system in Java.

There's nothing wrong with this, and it's obviously challenging, as WD is willing to pay above market rate for hires. But, it is unconventional, and I worried that I would get pigeonholed. As someone without much programming experience, I wanted a graduate opportunity to get me up to speed on that. They say the skills you learn programming Expresso are applicable to any other kind of programming because the designing is the same, and maybe it is if you have experience of conventional programming already, but I didn't.

1. Final Round: I went as it included a presentation to see if they could change my mind. The date could not be changed, as it was done in groups. Dress was "smart casual" but most wore suits. There were about 8 others in the same group. The first thing that happened was a presentation on the company with breakfast (pastries as well as tea/coffee). You get time for questions, and there were plenty, but they don't discuss pay with the group.

Then everyone splits up to do individual interviews in various small offices. You get 2 interviews in a row, with different interviewers for each one. The first is another soft interview, like the first phone one. The second is a technical interview. This was surprising, as the email arranging the interview didn't mention it. It seemed disorganized. The interviewer said he only wrote it up that morning and hadn't even seen my CV yet. The result was I really only knew enough to answer about 2/3 of the questions, but he was quite friendly about it. After, the group met up again. Speaking to others, it seemed that the technical interview was completely different from one person to the next, and mostly based on the whims of the interviewer.

Last, you get a tour of the whole building. It is a great place, and I felt like I was starting to change my mind about working there based on it. At the end, you get a gift bag. If you had other offers or interviews, they would wait for you to make a decision before the end of the year.

One week later, I got a call. I didn't get an offer. They didn't think I was technically good enough. I was surprised, given the kind of feedback I was getting on the day and that the surprise technical quiz was weighed so heavily compared to the UML design from before, which they said went very well. It was a curt call and no follow-up. I wasn't disappointed with the result, as I still wasn't sure I really wanted the job.

Overall, the interview experience was good. Everyone I spoke to from the company was friendly and professional and made me feel at ease.

Design a library system in UML.

Explain Big O notation and which complexities are the fastest/slowest.

Describe how a secure login for an online service, such as Facebook, works.

Describe method overloading in C++.

What does this short segment of code do?