Overall, it was a confusing and frustrating process. I was contacted by a Yammer recruiter who had seen my profile on LinkedIn and said they were interested in my web development skills. After a positive phone screening session with one for their engineers, I was invited to come in for a face-to-face interview. It lasted 3 long hours were I was pelted with numerous poorly-worded questions. Instead of asking "How would you do X?", it would often be "What is X?" or "Define Y". Basically, they spent more time testing my knowledge of acronyms and textbook definitions, than properly evaluating my technical knowledge. I was told afterwards they would get back to me by the next day. I then did not hear from them for a week. After that I was told that I had interviewed for the WRONG POSITION, and they would like me to come back and interview with the correct group. Foolishly, I agreed. I then had an hour session with a couple of engineers and did really well. I was able to answer all their questions and they seemed quite satisfied with my answers. I heard a lot of responses like "Yeah, that's exactly how I would do it" and "That's the answer we were looking for." Afterwards the manager came in and proceeded to ask me even more technical questions. Once again, they were worded poorly and had little or nothing to do with my actual skills. Any correct answers I gave would be followed by a demand to list all alternative ways to accomplish the same thing. Why was the manager even trying to evaluate me technically? Shouldn't she have trusted her engineers to do that? At one point she handed me a laptop and told me to write some code. I was not familiar with the text editor provided or any of the other tools available on the machine. After struggling to produce something for a few minutes, she gave up and the interview was over. I was once again told I would have an answer the next day. They didn't contact me until several days later. The whole process seemed chaotic and disorganized. I was never quite sure what they were looking for. Engineers should be trusted to do technical evaluations and managers should evaluate the candidate's personality and attitude. Would have turned the job down even if they offered it to me.

I have been on both of sides of the interview table numerous times. I have interviewed a lot of bright people and been interviewed by many. Never have I experienced arrogance in the process, until I interviewed with Yammer. Boy, how should I describe this? There are some basic rules how you conduct yourself during an interview. Especially when a candidate is out there to know about the company and the team, you better show your best face. One of the interviewer has an air of arrogance, know-it-all attitude and disregard to my previous experience. If only, I had the same attitude I would have walked immediately after that. The technical questions themselves are not very hard, but I did learn a good life lesson on how not to treat people you interview. Thanks for that!