This role was to lead a machine learning team. I first talked to a recruiter, then had a phone screen with the hiring manager; even though I don't have a traditional engineering/CS background, she said she was impressed with my machine learning experience and the applications I've built. She said she wanted me to do an onsite interview ASAP.
The first recruiter handed me off to a second recruiter, which is when the problems started. Instead of putting me straight through to an onsite interview like I had been told by the hiring manager, he insisted that I do a coding phone screen the day before my interview. This was inconvenient for me timing-wise, but he insisted, and I was really excited about the opportunity to work at Pinterest, so I agreed.
The coding phone screen was done in Coderpad. The engineer who did the phone screen called in late, and wasn't sure in what order to ask her questions. Once she settled on what question to ask, I clarified the requirements, explained my approach, and started coding. When I was almost finished with coding, she realized that one of the requirements she gave me - and I tried to clarify in the beginning - was incorrect. I fixed the program, tested it, then streamlined the code for efficiency and readability and tested it again. Then she asked me some questions about graph algorithms, which I answered. At the end she said there was no time left for me to ask her questions, even though we started late and the courteous thing would have been to extend the end time to make up for the late start time.
Later that day I got an email from the recruiter saying that my interview was canceled since it was determined that I wasn't a good match for the role. The main requirement for the role was expert knowledge of machine learning/deep learning, and since nobody ever tried to assess my skills in that area, they had no way of knowing how good of a match I was. I pressed the recruiter for more information, and he told me that I didn't pass Pinterest's "engineering bar", and anyhow, they already had a candidate to whom they were going to extend an offer.
I've heard many stories about nightmare recruiters before but had been lucky up until now not having had worked with one. Now I guess I have a recruiter horror story of my own. :-/
