Let me start by saying I interviewed at a bunch of companies this cycle, and this was by far the worst experience.

It started with a fairly standard recruiter call about my background and experience. They were very direct and professional. Nothing more, nothing less.

Where it all went wrong was the first round. It was a panel interview with three members of their team, lasting 1.5 hours. It began with some basic questions about my previous projects, which was fairly standard. Then, it evolved into Java trivia questions for the next 25 minutes. Some of the questions were so obscure that they literally had nothing to do with day-to-day development.

The interviewers kept cutting each other off. They were clearly not coordinated whatsoever and felt like they were just winging it at times. At one point, one of them received a phone call and just stopped speaking and went on mute to take it.

They seemed way more interested in whether I had memorized the answers to common trivia questions than assessing if I know how to write software. Don't get me wrong, for a Java-focused role, I was expecting some Java-related questions, but this was just overkill. It was supposed to end with a coding question, but there was a divine intervention and my internet cut out. By the time it came back on, they had all left the call.

The recruiter let me know afterwards that it wouldn't make sense to reschedule, as they thought I wasn't senior enough for the position and that the team has an extremely high bar. Sure, let's call it that. If you want to do well for this position, just Google common Java interview questions.

Honestly, this was such an off-putting and, in my opinion, outdated way of interviewing that I have no desire to ever apply to [Company Name] again.

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