Mixed emotions interview experience
Sometime back, I had given an interview for a company. I am writing my experience of the interview in this article.
I got a call from a recruiter of the company about the vacancy. He told me that my profile was well suited for a vacancy they had in their organization and asked me if I was interested for the opportunity. I was looking for a job change that time, So I told him “YES”. After that he emailed me a HackerRank online test link. I needed to clear that online test for the next rounds. He scheduled the test for the next day itself.
Next day, one of his colleague gave me a presentation about how the interview process would go on a video call. After that I needed to take the test. She told me that video cam should be turned on during the entire test. I started the test. It was a test of 1 hour which consisted 4 DS and ALGO problems and 4–5 multiple choice technical questions. I passed this round. (I was very happy.)
They scheduled the next round for me. It was a virtual interview using Microsoft Teams.
Second round was with a senior person in the project, I performed well in this round as well. The interviewer appreciated me a lot during the interview itself. He said — “You nailed it. You have very good technical knowledge.” So, I got the idea that I passed this round during the interview itself. Same day after few hours of the interview, recruiter called me and told that they will schedule next round. He also told me you had got extremely good feedback which was expected to me.(I was on cloud nine after this feedback.)
Next round was again a virtual interview using WebEx. In that interview, the interviewer did not ask me any question. It felt to me like a discussion. He firstly asked me about the projects I had done in my recent and previous organizations. I explained everything to him. Then he told me what I would be doing in their organization. Since it was a discussion, so I had no idea what would be its outcome. Because in such scenarios , everything depends on perception. From my perspective the discussion was good , but I did not have any idea from interviewer’s perspective.
Next day, recruiter called me and asked me how was the interview. I told him it was more a discussion so I can’t comment. He told me that result of that round would not matter as the first round was taken by a very senior person and his feedback would matter mostly. So even if the second interviewer did not give good feedback then also we will schedule the next round. He told me that they would schedule my next and final round next week.(I was hopeful this time)
After 2–3 days I got a mail from their organization that my profile did not suit for the role they were looking. I told about the mail to the recruiter same day. He said that he was on leave. After this, I never heard from anyone after that.
I waited for their call for 3–4 days and then made up mind for no further communication. (I definitely felt very bad for the end result.)
I failed the interview because my profile was not suited for the role. What I was not able to comprehend that - why they took 3 rounds just to get to the point that my profile was not suited for the role.
I raise a question — only I failed in that interview or it was a collective failure?
I failed to impress the second interviewer, the recruiter failed to give a clear communication, the first interviewer failed to evaluate if my profile is well suited or not, the second interviewer failed to ask appropriate questions. Many times when we fail any interview then it is not just failure of the interviewee , rather it is a failure of many people involved in the whole process.
Thanks for reading.