Cox Automotive Sr. Software Engineer interview questions

Was reached out to on LinkedIn by the team manager for recruitment and set up a screening call the day of. Screening went well and the manager expressed great interest, told me to apply so I was in the system, explained the rest of the process and what I should expect in the following interviews, then ended by saying he’d have the HR person schedule the interviews. I get a call from that person to go over my resume, she was nitpicking minor details on the resume that the hiring manager didn’t emphasize but other than that everything seemed to have gone well and she says she’ll be in touch regarding next steps. The weekend goes by and I get a notification saying they’re not considering me any longer despite the job posting still being open. Wish they were more clear, direct, and communicative considering they led me to believe I should be spending the following days preparing for the interviews. I’m always grateful for the added practice, but felt my time was wasted.

Applied via the Cox website, I was contacted by a recruiter a few days later, and then after a short call with the recruiter I was scheduled for an interview with the hiring manager. The interview was bit odd. It was the hiring manager and the lead engineer. The hiring manager asked about my experience, and some questions about how I would approach a project. I asked for further parameters and was basically told to answer as if I was working an ideal environment. I answered the question, and I felt like I had given a solid answer. At the end of the interview, however, I was told my answer was too idealistic. The questions from the lead developer were just bizarre for a senior engineering role. They wanted to know about how I setup an IDE, how to write "Hello, World!" in Java, and which design patterns I had used. The IDE question was the weirdest one. I asked for clarification a couple of times, and truly they wanted to know how I install my IDE, which plugins I use, and which one I prefer.