One of my more confusing interviews, their process:
Recruiter - contacted me via LinkedIn and email, but at no point in the process did we talk on the phone. Emails were very informal which was odd given we'd never met or even spoken. Salary and hours never came into it until I specifically brought those up.
Phone interview - I was put on speaker phone with the development team, which was awkward as their voices were quite muffled and I had to ask them to repeat themselves a few times. They seemed suprised and disbelieving I had been coding from a young age, and even when I went through my developer history they did not seem appeased. I was told this was a Nodejs role with TDD in which I responded my main strength is C# and TDD was new to me. They were ok with this as they said the language didn't matter, as long as I could adapt and show good code design. I was accepted for an interview after the call ended, via an informal email by the recruiter.
Face to face - To begin I went into the shared office building and was waved through by security. I went up to their floor but could not actually access the floor as the door was security locked. After deliberating for a few minutes someone walked out from their side to go downstairs, so I was able to slip through then.
I was next given a piece of paper with a coding task on it and told I had 5 minutes to make some notes about it. The exercise was a rather simple POS system, so I jotted down the steps involved to make it work. This was done with a TDD mindset so I of course planned out what I was going to do before writing any code. We then sat together at a desk and pair programmed the system. I was told at this point it was not so much about the problem, but a test of how good i was to work with.
As was known, Nodejs wasn't my strong point, and I made a few mistakes in the process which the pair pointed out and helped correct (syntax around .map or getting keys from a dictionary). TDD was done mostly successfully, and I was confident they were happy with my process of red, green, refactor. Surprising to me was that the test framework they set up for the interview randomly failed multiple times, and at one point we had to rope in another developer to fix the problem.
After the task was complete I talked to another HR rep, who seemed to be tasked with having to make small talk with me, apparent from the fact that my travel time was of great interest to her. The illusive HR rep who talked to me via email was nowhere to be seen.
The final stage of the interview was held in a meeting room with the 'tech team'. They started off by asking if their interview process could be improved, which again I internally thought was odd seeing as I was only halfway through the process myself. They next went through my CV and experience, and mainly just listened to me regurgitate what was already written down. They seem surprised of my experience with Agile processes, despite it being on my CV. I was also told at this point that I was expected to be on call every weekend, but there was no mention if I would be compensated for this. After the meeting the interview was concluded.
Refusal - The next day I was emailed to be told it would a no from them, and I quote 'he lacks the experience we're looking for at the moment'. Feedback was given in that I should not have pre-planned the POS system on paper, despite being given 5mins alone with the problem and a pen, and planning to be a first clear step of TDD (think out the design, think about the structure, write tests for that structure). It seemed I did not fit their custom style of TDD, which apparently involves no forward thinking and one should simply dive straight into writing tests.
The next piece of feedback was that I did not do enough research on the company, which reflected badly on me. This is despite me signing up to their 7digital website, and perusing the store and seeing how it all worked. When I brought this up in the meeting, it was dismissed as the 'front-end' which isn't really what the business is. Instead I was vaguely told they are a b2b company that provides an API that is consumed by start ups and radio 6.
Finally my CV was problematic, not concise enough and I should have tailored it the role. This is despite it already being tailored to a software developer role, and the recruiter not mentioning any problems with it, nor was anything mentioned during the phone interview.
All in all a very confusing process, in which no one wanted to point out to me I wasn't right for the role until they very end, after I had given up my time to do a face to face. This process should have ended at the phone interview stage, where I made it clear what my experience was. All in all a negative experience.
