Gracenote has been a silent market leader in providing data related to movies, music, daily tv shows etc to a wide range of product for eg: - Set-top boxes. Applied through their career page which landed me an interview. The interview process is short and sweet which comprises of an HR introductory call, Technical FnF with a panel and a Technical FnF with the Architect. All through the interview, the behaviour from Gracenote was very professional with a minute lack in considering the interviewer's time in the FnF.
The HR introductory call was done after reviewing the resume and hence the discussion about more around what exactly I am looking for in the new job and what were my expectations. This call went really well as the HR had thoroughly gone through the resume and then had set up the discussion which was really different from the usual HR discussions. After the HR discussion, a FnF was set up at the company's office in Mumbai. Finding this office is really difficult and the office space is relatively average but the environment looked cool and everyone seemed to enjoy the discussion and the work that they had on their plate. I had to wait for 30 minutes before I had the initial FnF with 2 technical people. The questions were targeted towards Core Java, J2EE, Queues along with the design and architecture of my past projects. This round went really well with me being very positive about it. The next FnF was on the same day and was with the Technical Architect for which I again had to wait for 30 minutes after the first round. It seemed that the interview wasn't organised properly but it can be ignored as people were very professional. Technical Architect asked questions were more towards "whether do I know a specific technology or no" and specific acronyms like "SOLID principle". It also contained discussions on the previous project's design and architecture and explanation on why I chose the technical stack. This round was ok as I couldn't gauge what exactly the Technical Architect expected as at some points he wasn't clear on his questions too which left me feeling that the question was just put to test my knowledge not if it can be leveraged by their product. This round ended abruptly and I was told to leave.
I didn't hear from them for about a week and I repeatedly ask for the feedback. After a week, the HR sent out a generic mail mentioning that I was rejected but did not mention the reasons for rejection and where I fell short in terms of Gracenote's expectation. I replied to the HR asking for the same but the HR never bothered to reply to it which again is ok as most HRs nowadays do it. To summarise, the interview started off and went really well but ended on a bad note. Technically, people are really good but I think they need to improve professionally and ethically.