The interview is directly with the head of the project. I was approved by the company's HR on Linkedin and thereafter had a face to face meeting with the HR and the person in charge of the project

For my role, there were supposed to be 4 rounds of interviews: HR screening, interview with a team member, interview with head of department, final HR interview. Interviewer didn't seem very interested in my background or ask about specific projects I did like other places I have interviewed at. I know people at Bytedance are very busy but he/she was looking at his/her screen most of the time typing stuff. The questions were of the kind which I felt were fishing for information e.g. what tech tools did Company X you worked at use? If you receive an offer from us and another company, what would you choose? I also felt like I was almost being dissuaded from joining because they kept selling it as a difficult, challenging place with a lot of work. I know because I was there. Anyway, the fact that I interned there before and demonstrated my ability to thrive in their environment also didn't make a difference. For people wanting to build strong relationships with people here during their internship: Go somewhere else. It's not going to happen at this company as they're too busy chasing work all the time to care about their ex-colleagues. Oh, and in typical Bytedance style, I was ghosted for a couple of weeks before the automated rejection email came in. Couldn't reach my ex-colleagues to speak either.