I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Accertify in Sep 2021
Interview
Started with a video interview with the director of engineering. That went well, and they sent along a full-stack coding challenge, involving setting up a database-backed API to perform GIS operations. I appreciated this, as it was more close to "actual work" than most of the other coding challenges I have experienced. The deadline was a bit aggressive - 48 hours from receipt, and the project was not trivial. I completed the assignment and they set up a video interview with the engineering team.
The video interview went strangely - despite all the time I had spent on the take-home, they were not able to give me a single point of feedback on it, positive or negative. When I directed questions to the engineers themselves, the manager would interrupt and answer for them. This is not appropriate interview behavior - I need to know if I can build a rapport with my fellow engineers.
The engineering team did seem technically sharp based on the questions they asked.
I immediately gave feedback to the recruiter that Accertify had moved far down on my list, and Accertify passed on their end as well. Just didn't seem like an interpersonal fit. If you like to joke around with your colleagues and smile, don't apply here.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
A lot of questions about Java/Spring/SQL. No "what would you do in this situation" type questions, more "what does the @Transactional annotation do", "what is the default bean scope in Spring", "what is the difference between HashTable and HashSet" etc.