The first interview was a phone screen with a recruiter. I was asked a little bit about my technical background and given some information about the company and the hiring process. The recruiter was very nice and informative.
The second interview was an hour long over-the-phone behavioral type interview. I was asked to recall times when I dealt with certain types of professional situations. In this second interview I started to get a few mixed signals about what exactly I would be doing in this position. I was being considered for either a Testing position or an Application Development position. The interviewer decided to recommend me for Testing, and not Application Development (my preference) because of my lack of experience with the relevant programming languages.
Next, I was scheduled for the Case Assessment. This is where you are given a situation and asked questions about how you would handle it from a business perspective. I was given instructional material about how to prepare for the Case Assessment by my recruiter, but I found the actual interview to be quite different than what I had prepared for. My interviewer was very nice and I felt the assessment went well. I was given the opportunity to ask my interviewer questions about the company. A few things bothered me about this interview; A) This interview was in-person and I had to drive an hour and a half each way from home to the city it was in, only to be there for 40 minutes. It seemed like something that could have easily been done over a video call, and I wasn’t even shown around the office while I was there. B) My interviewer was not aware of or affiliated with the position I was interviewing with at all. He was more of a proctor for this Case Assessment, and therefore I didn’t gain any more information about the position from this interview at all. C) My recruiter, in the email to set up the interview, said they would try and schedule me for the Confirming Interview immediately after the Case Assessment while I was still in the office. At the end of the Case Assessment I asked my interviewer if he knew anything about this and he seemed confused as to why I would think I had moved on to the next round of interviews already. I feel this made me come across as pushy or over-confident, when I was simply trying to get clarification. D) Everyone in the office seemed sad, and no one was talking to each other.
I was contacted to set up the Confirming Interview a few days later. This was over video conference. I was asked some more behavioral questions as well as what I was looking for in a company and in a job. At this point it was made clear that I was interviewing for the Testing position, and not the App Dev one. I also had the opportunity to ask questions about the company. Up until this point all my interviewers had said that this job may require a lot of travel, or at least being out of the office some days at client sites. In this interview it was made clear that this position in fact had no travel and I would be in the office pretty much 100% of my time. It was frustrating to learn this so late in the interview process.
Several Days later I was contacted by my recruiter and offered the position. But I was offered the App Dev position, instead of the Testing position. This was nice as it was my preferred position, but equally exasperating as I’d been getting information from my interviewers about the wrong position.
Overall, the process took about 3 weeks. All of the conflicting information I received throughout the process left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.