ReferWell interview questions

Met with a recruiter on Google meet, and had a good conversation, at the end he said there was a coding test…for a principal engineer. Before the phone call ended the recruiter stated that it doesn’t matter if you pass the code test, it’s more about how you write code. (Weird.. why don’t they just look at code I’ve written in the past instead of giving a test?) Additionally the recruiter told me what the questions were about. One of which wasn’t part of the test. I didn't finish it but I wrote clean and legible code, which I think was what they were looking for. 2 days later I get an email saying that they’re not moving forward due to the test. This was a waste of everyone’s time.

It was very unorganized. The CEO conducted the initial interview to gather basic info before the interview with the CTO, which might be acceptable for a small company. However, there were no established HR practices, and they didn’t fully grasp the technical terms and responsibilities required for this role. The questions they asked were beyond what is published in the job description. This is common in many small companies where IT hiring is done by those without subject matter expertise, The CTO is a newly appointed Software Developer, not an actual "CTO" with no management experience. It was a simple interview process but due to the lack of HR practices, it took forever to respond. However, I got another opportunity before this and was not bothered about the outcome. My advice is, to think twice even if you manage to secure a job offer from companies like this as your role can be eliminated with or without notice.