The recruiter found my profile through Naukri. The role was for a full-stack developer. She discussed the opportunity in great detail and outlined the expectations. As I was interested, I was given a screening test by Mettl to be completed the same day.

Round 0 - Coding Assessment (60 mins)

The test included one DSA question (Java/TypeScript) and 10 MCQs each on 4 sections: Java, ReactJS, TypeScript and SQL. I was informed the next day that I had cleared the test and was invited for the interview rounds.

Round 1 - Domain Interview (60 mins)

An engineering manager led this round. We began with introductions, and he asked me about my day-to-day work. The interview was around Java, JavaScript/TypeScript, and SQL.

Java

1. OOPS in Java with real-life examples.
2. What is Stream API, and why do we need it?
3. Difference between HashMap and HashTable?
4. Difference between LinkedList and ArrayList?
5. What is a deadlock, and how can we prevent it?
6. Difference between Comparable and Comparator.
7. Difference between == and .equals in Java. In which situation will you use them respectively?

TypeScript/JavaScript

1. How to perform asynchronous communication?
2. Pros and cons of using TypeScript.
3. Difference between type and interface.
4. Few output questions in JS revolving around truthy and falsy values.

SQL

1. How to improve SQL query performance?
2. What are stored procedures?
3. How to find distinct values in a SQL query?
4. Write a query to find the second-highest-paid employee. Write different ways to achieve this.
5. Write a query to find the highest-paid employee from each department.
6. Write a query to find the manager of each employee from the employee table.
7. Difference between INNER JOIN, LEFT JOIN, RIGHT JOIN and OUTER JOIN.

I was able to answer most questions correctly, but did not have answers to 2-3 questions. In the end, I asked about the impact of the tech presence of Volvo cars in India, as I did not know their tech team's existence in India before. Overall, I felt the interview was good as it stretched by 15 minutes, and I was hoping to clear this round. I got a call from HR the very next day, stating that I had cleared the domain round and scheduled my techno-managerial round with US-based interviewers for next week.

Round 2 - Techno-Managerial Interview (60 mins)

This interview was conducted mainly by 2 interviewers from Volvo Cars USA. There were a couple of other engineers as well in the background, belonging to IOS and Android development. Although the title says 'Techno-Managerial', it was mostly a casual discussion on Volvo Cars' vision, tech-hubs, team structure, work policies, etc. The main interviewer asked about my day-to-day work and about writing good code. One of the interviewers went through my resume and asked a couple of questions based on it. Another asked about CI/CD and whether I integrated AI into my work. He noticed that one of the certification links had expired and notified me about it. Overall, I would say it was a healthy discussion.

However, after a few weeks of silence, I called up the HR to know if they were proceeding with my candidature. She said that the candidature is still in process, and I would need to wait another week as new roles were coming up. Finally, after almost 1 month from the previous interview, the HR called to inform that they would be scheduling an HR round soon, and I would be joining the Customer Digital team. The next day, she asked to submit documents to proceed with the further process. But still there was another long period of silence, post then I decided to give up.