Overall feeling: totally unprofessional interview process and techniques, almost like a joke.
(Stage 1)
In less than 24 hours after applying, I received a technical test to solve, with two parts:
1. write automated tests for a native Android app
2. write automated tests for a REST API
Both in the language of your preference.
(Stage 2)
After sending the implementation to the test, I went on for a first face to face interview in their office. The interview was supposed to be more towards technical aspects. The interviewers were quite young (read inexperienced) and one of them was only 1 month with the company. The interview process was totally unstructured. Even tough job advertisement was pure automation, they've stressed on manual testing. They even asked those kind of stupid ISTQB question "what's the difference between white box and black box testing". They've jump through somewhat unrelated topics, came back to the some of the topics, it was some sort of Chaos theory applied maybe and I did not understood it :))
Addressing the test solution, there was no desire to verify the candidate's ability to argue their solution and/or the choice of the language(s) or framework(s) used, rather just few obsessive questions on why Calabash and Ruby were not the choice. (if you are experienced enough to check on the interviewers, you will easily see on their profiles that these language/framework is their preferred one ...). All that just to end with a sentence like "anyway is not so important, we need people with development understanding/background, but there will also be a lot of manual testing ...". Then they stressed again on the motivation to do manual testing ... no quizzes, math questions, algorithms or data structures.
(Stage 3)
I felt that even being totally retarded on the previous interview, I would have been called to the next one :)). Next face to face was with some sort of development manager/architect. Blindly trusting the preview "technical" interview, he just stressed again on manual testing + suddenly a question like "what if it's Friday evening and you will have to stay until 22 PM for a release?"
(Stage 4)
I went on to meet the branch director for a face to face interview. You feel like entering to the Emperor: while all the rest of the employees are located in a big open space room, the guy has his own super luxurious office, with leather couch, plasma TV, all fancy stuff around. In a very "professional" manner he will invite you to take the slave place - a low class chair, while he seats like a King in front of you, laying on his super comfy couch. His introduction starts with smtg like "don't waste my time, be concise, because I will judge you on that". Then he keeps reading on his mobile devices or watching TV while you provide answers to his questions. He spoke on the back of few existing employees. Not to mention he asked the most stupid question to ask in a 2017 interview: "tell me one of your weaknesses". Towards the end, we came to that part where the candidate may also ask some questions. You could not stop the guy talking! You would ask one simple question and he will provide you a 5 minutes answer. Also, he was late to the interview, had to sit alone for 5-10 minutes waiting for him, which I believe to be absolutely awkward at this level. Obviously that was the stage where both parties decided to stop the process.
All in all, I felt like going to the kindergarten to play with children. Amateurish.
