The job opening was posted by HR, so I reached out to her, expressing my interest. After a day, she replied with a Google form to fill out with my basic details.
Round 1
After one or two days, I received an assignment that needed to be completed within 24 hours. I completed the assignment and submitted the form that was shared with me via email.
Round 2 | 1 hour
After a day, I got a call from HR informing me that my interview was scheduled. This was the standard DSA round with the Engineering Lead. It started with a general introduction, and he asked me if there was any round before this one. I mentioned the assignment round and asked if I should explain the problem statement and my approach, but he seemed disinterested.
He then asked me two questions: one about BST and another about greedy algorithms. I solved both of them. Some time was left, so he asked me about the projects I had worked on, and we had some conversation around the company's tech stack.
Round 3 | 30 minutes
After a day, I got a call from HR informing me that my HR/Behavioral round was scheduled. The interviewer asked several behavioral questions, focusing on how I take feedback and resolve conflicts. I realized midway that my answers were portraying a negative side of me (I think the interviewer wanted to see this side), so I changed my tone and perspective during the interview. I was expecting a rejection email after this round.
Round 4 | 30 minutes
Surprisingly, after a day, I got a call informing me that the CTO round was scheduled. We started with a brief introduction, and she asked me some questions about my current work. I was explaining the kind of database I used, and she asked if I had used MySQL. I replied that I had mainly worked with NoSQL , vector databases and have worked with MySQL for project purpose only . She then asked me to write an SQL query. I started writing the query, but it was a bit wrong. She asked if I had any experience in DevOps, to which I replied that I had made dashboards with Grafana and Prometheus for logging and monitoring purposes (I think she was more interested in Devops part not backend systems ) . She ended the interview at that moment, and it concluded in about 15-18 minutes.
I was expecting some more questions to be asked. I was not given a chance to even correct my query, and the interview ended abruptly after being judged on one SQL query.