1. 30 minute call with Non Technical Recruiter
2. 2 hours - 3 SQL questions - Codility exam - easy - basic joins, group by, order by, union all, case and cte usage was required
3. 1 hour - interview with Integration Lead - (Worst interview experience in my life till date - one sql problem - no tech or other interesting questions asked)
I would like to pinpoint the unprofessionalism I faced in the round 3 interview with an Integration Lead at Ivalua who had 8 years experience in Ariba and at Ivalua for 4 years (that is what they said to me)
The person was representing Ivalua as a company to a potential hire myself in the interview and I expect professionalism when interviewing for an MNC despite working from home. This person appeared in his casuals on the couch, there was a lot of background noise and the person was not focused in the interview as he walked away from the screen as well. I'm not sure if he even followed what I was speaking when I was introducing and speaking about the work I did on the latest project.
He dialed into the meeting 5 minutes later than the scheduled and there was no apologies nor some small talk like meet and greet so I initiated it all. I asked how are you and the reply was 'ah, its okay'.
After few minutes into the meeting, where we introduced ourselves and after I finished furnishing details on the kind of work I have done, he said "its almost like 20 minutes over and there is not much time left". He was basically sulking and this left me baffled and wondered if we are in the interview to save time?
Initial, meet and greet plus exchange of background information takes 15 minutes definitely and why would someone complain about this unless I was asked to keep it crisp and less than a minute?
So, I assured him we still got 40 more minutes to cover anything and I will be available for a follow up interview if he requires additional interview from me, after which he said he walked into the meeting with a hard stop of 45 minutes and I told him that the recruiter has blocked my calendar for 1 hour. Looks like an internal scheduling mishap that could be avoided.
Next, we moved on to solving a simple basic SQL code. I did code it right but I think he doesn't understand there can be more than one solution to a problem. He walked into the interview with a prefixed solution in mind and I tried to explain that using a COMMA JOIN and INNER JOIN are both the same and they are equivalent, to which he disagreed and told me I would get errors indeed upon execution of my solution. I wish I wrote code in SQL IDE instead of writing code on notepad so that I could have educated him about my solution and taught him the use of inner join utilizing between conditions. After the interview, I decided to show him the result and wanted him to tell him that comma join and inner join are the same as well as both queries will have the same outcome. So after the interview, I quickly made up sql queries to create tables, inserted data shown in the problem and wrote the two solutions - one with comma join and other with inner join and sent the file to recruiter to pass it to the interviewer and hoped the interviewer realises there can be multiple solutions.
I couldn't believe the negative reviews on glassdoor about Ivalua until I experienced it and cannot agree more. With folks with no interest and poor communication skills on the team, I'm unsure what is the value ad for Ivalua's clients unless getting the project delivered is the only key point without caring for the firm's culture or staying upbeat internally and externally.