I recently had an interview experience with Canva that I felt was both frustrating and disappointing. The interview process consisted of three rounds. The first was an HR round, where they asked basic questions about hashcode and equals, inheritance vs. composition, synchronization and locking, and checked vs. unchecked exceptions. Fairly standard stuff for any Java developer.
The second round was a live coding session where I had to implement a topological sort algorithm. I completed the task without any issues and felt confident about my performance.
The final round, however, was the most grueling and exhaustive. I had to design an e-commerce website, which took around 45 mins. After that, I was asked to answer some behavioural for 45 mins, followed by a coding task which was also a 45 mins round where I was asked to write the HashMap functions from scratch without using any utils functions. Despite the challenges, I nailed every part of the interview and completed all the tasks successfully.
However, in the end, they rejected my profile. The reason? Apparently, I missed a few points in the system design interview. Honestly, this felt incredibly unfair. I gave it my best, completed each task thoroughly, and was confident about my abilities. The rejection came as a shock, especially after everything seemed to go well during the interview.
It’s a shame that despite performing well across multiple rounds, a few missed points were enough for them to dismiss my profile. If you’re considering interviewing with this company, just be prepared for an unpredictable and stressful experience.
