I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at iTech Media (London, England) in Jan 2021
Interview
A recruiter working at iTech sent me InMail and contacted me several times via email. At first I didn't respond but in the end I decided to learn more about it. There is a lot of secrecy in regards to the nature of what the company does. They don't openly advertise it.
The recruiter told me 7 different titles (starting from Senior Staff engineer down to DevOps engineer) for this role and I did not get any information on how to prepare for the 1st interview by the external or internal recruiter. I did not get a job spec and the recruiter said they have been waiting for a job spec since last year. This is a lesson for me to never go to an interview again if they don't give information about the topics that we'll cover.
In my 1:1 interview, they asked some basic questions and there was a systems design question. I wasn't expecting one, but I didn't mind having a discussion on this topic. As soon as I started answering the question, before even finishing my sentence, the interviewer INTERRUPTED ME and started asking questions that would ultimately lead to a secret question he had in his mind and was expecting me to answer that specific use case that happened at iTech media. I was trying to finish my sentences but was constantly getting interrupted by other questions changing the focus completely, and in the end the question was "how do you ensure the site stays live if someone deletes the load balancer?"
I explained I wasn't familiar with this scenario and it never happened to me and shared my ideas.
When I heard from the recruiter, he didn't tell me I was rejected, he told me I should apply for another role. I asked for feedback which I never received, and the recruiter insisted I wasn't rejected.
Long story short, I went to an interview not knowing the job title or job spec, not knowing what technologies they used, I was constantly interrupted in the interview, the interviewer did not answer any of my questions (he said I will at the end but then he "forgot") and in the end the recruiter wouldn't admit I was rejected because he was hoping I would apply for another role.
In the end, they sent me an email saying "we hope your interview process was smooth, give us feedback" etc. Maybe they have good culture as they claim on their website, but I don't recommend going through this process.
My advice is to stop pressuring candidates. If they are interested, they will reply. There is no need to send follow up emails for over two months. It's annoying.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Why are you looking to leave your current company?
What is your biggest flaw and what you did to address it?
Previous experience
Systems design question