1. Phone Interview - HR person who called me was very nice. Every questions and answers went smooth. Overall this experience wasn't too bad. At the end of the phone call she said she was going to give me 3 online tests before I move on. It was 2 hackerranks and 1 case study. She said she was going to email the links to the test in an hour.
2. After 3 hours, still no email. So I emailed her first, asking for the links. Then she replied right away. Maybe she was busy. I understand. Hackerranks were thought provoking, but not generally too difficult. As a non CS major I had to use all the time. The case study does require some writing, almost to the extent of being a project.
3. After I sent the results, the same HR girl arranged a live online coding test with an engineer. I thought this was the real thing, and prepared for it as much as possible. At the time of the interview, the engineer who was supposed to interview me apparently wasn't available, and some other "person" (I'm not even sure if she was an engineer herself) called to interview me instead. Didn't find that an issue and moved on to take the interview. Again as a non-CS major, I had to think for awhile. Wasn't satisfied with the result, but it was OK, because I got to solve it anyways.
4. Couple of days later I got asked for on-site interview. Maybe the live coding interview wasn't everything, so I set up a date and went in for the interview. Location is nice; right next to LAX, view was great, and company itself is big. I say hi's and hello's to people and I was led to a room where the real interviews will be happening. In there I finally get to meet the HR people. Nice people; they wanted to emphasize that they were there to support me, which I appreciated. I was supposed to be interviewed by two people: one from the team and the QA head, to my understanding. The HR people left as soon as they explained what will happen.
5. I wait for awhile, and the first interviewer walks in. We greet each other, shake hands, and even before he sits down he asks me questions regarding the interview. I don't remember the exact sentence, but it was something about a case study. Generally it was him asking the questions, I answer, and after a second or two of "hmm"s or "ok"s, he asks another question. The overall feeling I got from this person was that he seemed like the interview was a waste of his time; generally he stuck to the questions he had on his paper, and he left as soon as he was done.
6. One of the HR person comes in again, and asks how it went. We talk for a bit, and lets me know the head of the QA is in a meeting and is running a bit late. I actually found that extremely odd; I didn't know why they scheduled an interview for this date then. I didn't have any choice so I just waited.
7. After 30 minutes the HR person comes in and says the QA head won't be able to interview me today, so I'm going to need to come back on a later date. Thinking back, I'm thinking this is how they reject a non-satisfactory applicants.
8. At the end of the day I email the HR girl; a short thank you letter, saying it's a shame I didn't get to interview all of them. No response for a week and a half. I email her again for a followup, and to my surprise in less than 10 minutes a different HR person replies, saying they moved on to other applicants.
Even without any further explanation this was a bad and time-consuming experience. I didn't understand the negative reviews before the interview, but now I know. There are many other things that I found bad, but writing that down seems like more waste of time. Apparently there's lots of avoidance when facing responsibilities. Maybe I wasn't qualified, or maybe I was. Still doesn't change the fact the people who work here wasn't very professional.
