Despite the interview seeming normal and the interviewer being friendly and constantly smiling, I found the overall process quite unprofessional and unpleasant for the following reasons:
Lack of engagement during the interview: I spent an hour and a half on the task implementation, which was absolutely correct, met all the requirements, and passed unit tests. During this time, I explained every step to the interviewer, who did not ask many additional questions. This lack of engagement made it difficult to gauge any specific areas they were evaluating.
Delayed and impersonal response: After the interview, I did not hear back from the recruiter for three weeks. When I finally received a response, it was a rejection email that was entirely non-personalized and contained a generic "thank you for your interest" message. There was no explanation of why my candidacy wasn't considered for further stages, nor any feedback on potential mistakes in my code.
Overall, I feel that I wasted an hour and a half of my working time for an interview process that lacked professionalism and respect for the candidate's effort. This experience was quite disappointing.
