I was contacted by a recruiter via LinkedIn. The recruiter set up an initial phone call with me, then scheduled a technical phone screen with an engineer. Prior to the interview, I was given 2-3 weeks to prepare, and was provided materials by the recruiter to study. This included practice problems on LeetCode and CareerCup. I referenced Glassdoor interviews and also purchased Cracking the Coding Interview and various algorithms textbooks to brush up on my knowledge (since it has been a while since I have been out of school). The first phone interview went okay. It was done through coderpad and the interviewer asked me 2 coding questions. The interviewer was very helpful and responsive, which made it easy to bounce ideas off of and get confirmation that I was heading in the right direction. About 4-5 days later, I received a call from my recruiter to schedule a follow-up phone screen. Again, I was given about 2-3 weeks to prepare. The second phone interview, also done through coderpad, did not go as well. The interviewer only asked me 1 question and was not as responsive as the first, which made it a little trickier to tell if I was heading in the right direction. I struggled to articulate my thoughts, so there were some awkward moments of silence that made me panic. I did not finish implementing the question. Ultimately, I think that was my downfall, as I received a rejection e-mail about 6 days later. Practicing various medium-hard problems on LeetCode and Cracking the Coding Interview definitely helped, but getting more practice articulating my thoughts out loud would have helped me further. I am also still kind of rusty on various data structures/algorithms, so spending extra time understanding those would have also helped.