What was your worst software engineering interview experience (as a candidate), and what made it so bad?

I interviewed with a British university a few years back. The position involved working on a fleet of web services that provided data such as species that were tagged in different geographic regions, with the broad goal of supporting biodiversity-related research. To keep it short: the first half of the interview was with their developers, and it went extremely well. The second, supposedly non-technical half saw me sat in the centre of a semicircle of seven or eight people, sat behind desks a few metres away from me, who proceeded to fire a mix of technical and non-technical questions at me. It felt like being on a horrible mash-up of University Challenge with The Apprentice. They asked me what were the main benefits of object orientation. Working on my earlier assumption about their programming experience, I tried to ground my answer in common-sense without resorting to jargon. This went down like a lead boat; they seemed to want more. I stepped it up a notch, explaining the benefits of things like Liskov substitution and decomposition in plain English; still no ball. It turned out that what they wanted was some arbitrary list of OOP concepts—the sort you might find in the first two chapters of an Introduction to Java textbook. Nothing more, nothing less. They asked why I was interested in this job, and I answered that I thought biodiversity was an important topic and I liked that I would be contributing to a system that would be used to indirectly assist researchers. A professor on the interview panel was very taken aback and haughtily informed me that I was not applying to help them with their research, just to do the programming. Next, they asked me *why* I thought biodiversity was important. When I gave a reasonably well thought-out answer (touching on stabilizing ecosystems and using the Daisyworld simulation to link it back to my field of expertise), the aforementioned professor took it as further evidence that I had grand delusions that I would be personally involved in their research. Towards the end, they threw a curve ball, asking for recommendations to optimise a query to search for all datapoints within a polygon. As it turned out, I'd anticipated a question like this and had several decent suggestions off-the-bat. They seemed more annoyed by this than impressed. I made several errors of judgement in the second interview, but I respectfully submit that this is the first time I have heard of an employer being suspicious that a potential employee was genuinely interested in what they did. Edited to add: the interview itself was so odd that I forgot to mention possibly the funniest part of the experience. About midway through the disastrous second interview, while I was in the middle of answering a question, a cleaner in the hallway caught my eye and started miming at me that she wanted to clean this room right now. I tried to continue my answer while trying to mime back "PLEASE, NO!" This completely confused my interviewers; I explained what was going on, they looked round at her and then… just turned back to me, ignoring her. Annoyed and probably equally confused, the cleaner continued trying to communicate with me through the glass for about another ten seconds, finally giving up in a huff when she saw I was clearly more interested in getting through this job interview than placating her through a sheet of glass.

In my experience, I found that some companies like Facebook were amazingly professional - all my rounds were conducted so smoothly that such management itself was a motivation to join. Some others weren't as organised, and my worst experience ever was with Adobe, not once but twice! First When Adobe came to my school in my graduation year, they first screened candidates on written technical tests and cleared just 3 in the entire class. (I was studying in one of the best schools in the country.) In the next interview round, they saw my resume again and realized that my grades were too low and clearly I had been cleared by mistake. They said they had planned to take an easy interview and hire almost everybody they selected in the written rounds. However, my grades were too low and they couldn't hire me due to their policies for fresh graduates. I suggested that they could interview me before coming to any decisions, but they refused. So I said "Ah well, OK, no problem." and left. A few months later, I got a call from Adobe again, and they said that I had been one of the best candidates they had found, and that perhaps we could talk again etc. Well, let's fast forward a bit. Second Adobe held a walk-in interview session, and candidates were screened through written tests and were invited to be present at a given hour, sometime in the morning. Most of the candidates, including me, were from out of town and had reached therefore much ahead of time. We waited in the lobby until the recruiters appeared, half an hour after the given time. They seated us, about thirty in all, in a board room and thereafter candidates would be taken out in ones and twos. The process was very slow, and most of us were still there at the lunch hour. For security reasons, they kept us locked in the board room, and of course, since every door in the building required a card swipe, none of us could go anywhere. We were getting hungry, so in the afternoon, we were given a small recess to go out and eat and come back in twenty minutes. This was getting ridiculous, but we had a smoke and a quick coffee at the nearest cafe, and went back and waited some more. My turn came in the evening, and I hadn't had a decent meal all day! I met the interviewer in a small meeting room, and all my attention was at his empty pizza box :P . He asked me to write me a recursive program to check if a string is a palindrome. I asked if an iterative solution wouldn't be better here, but he said he wanted a recursive solution. Even as I talked, my attention was at the pizza box. He saw my blank face and said he'd come back in 5 minutes. To this day, I cannot think of a good reason why anyone would want to write a recursive program to check if a string is a palindrome. I figured he wanted to see if I knew what recursion was. I finally managed to look away from the pizza box for a few moments and quickly wrote a code on the board. He came back and glanced at the code. Then he made a face and said "No no, that's not it!". That was confusing. I knew my code would work. (Trust me, I do know recursion.) So I verified with him that my code was indeed recursive, and that it would report whether the string was a palindrome or not. He said again "Yes, but that's not it." I asked him if he thought my code had a flaw but he refused to answer. I asked him if he was looking for something specific in the answer, and again he said he couldn't tell me. I asked a couple more questions looking at alternative solutions but got nowhere. So I told him that I wasn't sure I understood what he really wanted me to answer. At that point he said he had no other questions and that I should wait outside. Five minutes later, the HR came and informed me I had not been selected and that I could leave. After being made to wait all day (without eating), the interview was over in 10 minutes, after a single question, which makes no practical sense but which I still attempted, and the interviewer did not even explain to me what he found lacking. (I don't think I was rejected for attitude or soft skills; I am a meek person but well spoken and articulate.) All in all, it was an unpleasant experience. The wait was unnecessary, they could have managed people better with time slots. Also, it's basic hospitality to provide food when your guests are hungry. (Or at least let them go out and eat.) And I believe that an interviewer should explain to a candidate what he is judging him for.

I agree with Anonymous. I had one of the best experience with Facebook interview process. Usually when giving interviews I try not to be judgemental. I understand both the interviewer and the interview-process is not perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. But I think Walmart took it to whole new level. I got interview scheduled 7 or 8 times (actually I lost the exact count), which never happened. Here is how it goes. I was contacted by HR, and we decided that I am very good job fit both in terms of attitude, skills and experience. I was told, someone will get in touch with me to get my phone screen scheduled. And later my first phone screen was scheduled, in which they were not very flexible with timings. Next few days I spent reading about the company, looked into Job Description carefully. Searched about work culture. Etc. NEXT: On the scheduled day of phone screen, 15 minutes prior to the call, I came home get into the secluded silent place, with notepad, pen, headphones. Waited for half an hour. No one called. Sent a mail. They said they were sorry and will look into this. They scheduled another phone screen, and another, and another. And every time I did the steps mentioned in NEXT. I told them since I don't have a convenient place to talk in office, either I have to start home early for phone screen or I have to work from home. But things didn't change, they didn't give me anytime which was convenient for me. After 5 consecutive missed interviews, and only one with 45 minutes of prior intimation of cancellation, I decided to dropout of process. But they insisted, so I finally told them, I will come to their office sit for whole day and they can take phone-screen whenever they feel they have time. At least I would save my time this way. They said it is not possible. However, after few days they called me that they have a hiring event in their office, and I could drop by. I reached 1 hour before scheduled time in the morning, waited their till lunch time. Then HR called us in conference room to have lunch. But it barely had pizzas to feed us all. Anyways after having lunch I waited there. Finally I was called for interview. I was already exhausted. While giving interview I realised some uneasiness on the part of interviewer. I asked him and then I realised I was being interviewed for wrong position. The hiring event was senior level SDEs, and not for Devops/System Engineers. The interviewer apologised for the mistake on the behalf of the company and I came back home. Later one more phone screen was organised, which never happened. But after this I didn't bother to follow up. Not sure it was my random luck, or every candidate has to through similar mismanagement.

The worst interview I had is with Redhat back in 2007. The interview was for a software developer position and it had 6 interviews. But there was not even a single coding question. The interviewers kept on shooting behavioral and experience based questions. I was interviewing as a fresh grad, don't they want to see my code? Lets say I was a phony who can talk buzz but can't write code? How are they planning to detect those kind? If it was a short interview I would understand but hour after hour the same questions being asked by different people seemed waste of everybody's time. Also the sad news is that I am not selected because they found out on the day of the interview that an current intern also applied for the same position. At the end of it, I felt the whole interview was a sham. If they wanted to hire me they will hire regardless of my performance.

I was interviewed over Skype for a start-up company. The job was of a developer for an ERP product. Mainly to work on Java, J2EE, webservices and Database layer. I was surprised to see that guy Googling interview questions and asking me 'real-time'. His exact words : "Let me google some questions". It was a turn-off for me. As much as I as a candidate prepare for interview, I expect the interviewer to know his job of interviewing well enough. The questions were totally random and not even relevant to the job. For example: "How would you test if your random number generator is producing good randomness." I said there are statistical tests to do that but I don't know them. Of course you are not expected to know all that shit unless you really have studied or worked in that area. Like, come on, ask me Data Structures or Algos or Programming Languages or anything related to my background or the job I am applying for. What's the point asking those specific fields of statistics for an ERP job ? His second question was "Do you know Simulated Annealing?". Boy! I had never even heard that ever. And I wonder how many regular programmers have heard that either, unless he/she has worked in that field. Should I ask Fast Fourier Transform for a job of UI development ? Gimme a break.

This happened to during on of the on campus placement of a good company (which I wont name) and it was the third company to visit our college. I must tell you that I was still unplaced then and bit tensed. I got a grouped into very good group of debators in the GD round but fortunately we did a very clam and poised discussions on the topic "Is mobile phone really helping or harming us" (I don't remember the exact words). The moderator was very impressed and 8 out 10 students got selected for final technical round. I was the first to be called for technical interview even before I could have filled the form they had given us. The technical round was great too and he was very impressed with my projects and my answers. So I was set to the HR  interview immediately. So It began with the usual question: "Tell me about yourself ?". I answered as usual and at some point in my answer I said I work good when I get a supportive environment and where the boss help me to achieve my true potential. I don't know what I said wrong there. All I tiring to do was being honest. But I can tell you for sure that I have made sure that I will never say that to any other HR interview because of the following things that happened. The Lady HR catched that line and started asking me all sorts of question like "What if your boss is not good?", "What if he gives your colleagues more recognition for the works that you have done?". Every sort of related question. I tried to answer them humbly to my full capabilities. She didn't seemed convinced.      She asked me a sort of ragging question."What will you do if your boss be biased towards you?". I tried to give a very modest answer that I will try to talk to him and have a discussion on the matter or I will keep quite prove things though my work. She counter questioned "Won't you complain to higher authorities?". To that I answered I won't. She stressed, "You won't complain?". I said, "I may if things goes out of limits". But then she sort of gave a cunning/evil look as asked "So you will complain about your boss. Hmm". As you can see it felt like ragging to me. I really started getting pissed off of by that time. Then the she asked about my family and one line I said my mother is dependent on me. So she asked me  "How will you will you manage with you mother in Banglore with such income which supports only one?". I was really getting started getting frustrated. What she wants to know, how I will manage my income. I was thinking, Is this a stress test?. What I certainly felt like it was ragging. It didn't stopped there. She asked me "Will you try to find a higher package job". I shouted in my head , Are you kidding me who wouldn't. I couldn't understand what she as expecting out of me, to be honest or diplomatic?. I tried a diplomatic answer as the previous honest answer backfired. "She asked me what will you do if you get a higher salary job after this placement?". I thought is this a real question, who wouldn't. But still I still tried to give some diplomatic answers but she stressed on the question. It broke my patience and said "I will" and later at some point I also said that "I don't thing I really would give my best performance in your company if my Boss is too bossy." I knew I was going to get rejected with that answer and believe me I cant work in a company where people are like this, seriously I personally can't work in this type of environment. This type of questions continued with my best friend to who went next to me. He was also very good coder and and had worked with GNU under GSoC. God he worked with the best of people out there. He  face similar questions and he answered similar answers. We both are like minded. Later we heard some Technical Interviewer saying to the placement committee that they were very  very impressed by both our CV's and projects. But we both knew what will happen so out of anger and frustration we filled idiotic things in our form they gave us. One question was "Whats your long term goal". I answered "To get rich and give the money to poor.". I know guys I should have had more patience but believe me I couldn't. I don't like people who behave like this to students just because we are undergrads and students. It was my worst HR ever and I have learnt from the mistakes and then I cracked back to back 4 companies.

Anatomy of an Interview @ Oracle India Pvt. Ltd. Following are my personal views during the interview I gave ( on 15th June 2013 ) at Oracle India Pvt. Ltd. Thiruvananthapuram Office. I am currently working in a Start-up @Bangalore. Result : Has been rejected ( And I have moved on in my Life.) Purpose of Writing : How the whole thing went wrong ( Probably from Both the Sides ). whole Interview process breakdown : 1) Referral asked from current Employees. 2) Resume short Listed for Face-to-Face Interview. 3) Face-to-face Round 1 interview. 4) Face-to-face Round 2 interview. 5) Rejection. Oracle as Reputed MNC has shown a very bad(During this drive) image for the interview Process. 1) Referral asked from current Employees.    One of my friends Posted on Facebook the Oracle is looking for 6 months+ experience candidate.    With not so clear ( even to their employees ) Job description, that the opening is for Fresher or Experienced candidate, I still count my odds and apply by sending my resume. 2) Resume got short Listed for Face-to-Face Interview.    with no direct contact to the candidate ( details were there in the resume ). employee who referred gets this mail to call shortlisted candidate within two days. Mail :    Please inform the following candidate to come down on Sunday, 15th Jun @ 9 AM to our office in Trivandrum. XXX XXX - ( My NAME )    Are you Kidding me? I thought. I was staying almost 730KM away from the mentioned location. They couldn't spare a week's time for the candidate to prepare? after all they are looking for experienced one we need some time to brush up the concepts learned during under graduation. 3) Face-to-face Round 1 interview    With Face-to-face interview scheduled so surprising early,I missed all my chances of getting a train Ticket to Thiruvananthapuram thus, getting a Bus was only option.   Bus managed to reach night before the interview Day.   So, Here comes "THE" Day , i was told to report at 10 via mail ( again to the employees not the candidate ) Mail :   Hi, To reduce the waiting time for candidates, i have made some changes in the schedule. Please keep the candidates informed Candidates from XXXX - 9:00 AM XXXX - 10:00 AM - ( MY SLOT ) XXXX - 11:00 AM XXXX - 11:30 AM I reached almost on Time.( met fellow candidates and talked to them ) Most of them were from TCS. Few from Wipro and one were like me from a startup background looking for better career opportunity. 10:30 I was called and asked for my Resume. ( No other Documents were asked ) 10:40 I was called for the interview. I am taken inside interview room. First Question why I want to leave Bangalore and come down to Thiruvananthapuram. Answered with all my valid points. Second Question : Personal Introduction. Then he looked at my resume, saw some of the technologies he knew well and asked few questions on them, I answered them to the best of my knowledge. He moves on to the Traditional way of asking DS and algo. ( Topic of the Day was Linked List). He asked one Difficult Question then broke down into a simpler one and asked me to solve one by one. He even gave a hint where I was struck, which eventually was solved by me. Then he asked questions regarding my Projects which were very Genuine, and to the point. He even asked if one my android projects were implemented as a live project. Then he asked about the PAPER I published which was also my Major Project, I told him how exactly we implemented our whole project, and how it works based on external APIs. He told me to move to other Room, when he was done with the first round. Here comes the waiting time for the Second Round ( as  the Leaving Door was on the other end of the floor I accepted myself as one the candidates who passed first Round )  It was Sunday most of the restaurants are Closed in that locality on that Day.  But with No snacks/Breakfast ( in the morning ) , Candidates were asked to leave for the lunch on their own and report back in next 1-2 hour. I and two more candidates were asked to stay as our second round was soon going to get started. Both of them left after a while and I was left alone. 3) Face-to-face Round 2 interview I am taken inside another interview room.This person seemed senior on position in the way he asked about my reasons to leave Bangalore and move to Thiruvananthapuram if I get the job. ( and he was not at all impressed with my answers I guess. ) Then he doesn't ask about anything and hands me over the sheet of paper with some analytic/Data interpretation question. I am asked to solve two from them ( no choice given ) first one was array based. ( write a program question ) second one was on data interpretation.this question was so ambiguous( well with so many unknown I would say ) that I still remember that question or the most part of it. for a hint question was four persons were travelling from four sources to four destination. ( nothing mentioned if unique ) thus to solve it, no of variables given were less. I was left alone in the room to solve those. after some time he comes back to see my progress. I told him that I was not able to solve the second one ( I showed him my approach and those many unknown that I got from the problem ) He ignored that and asked about the other question given to me. I solved it the way I thought it was correct, but he said I was not optimal with soln. He goes out, and brings another question paper and says .. this one is simple let's see if you are able to crack this or not .. and he gives another programming question as well. I solved both. ( Not to mention for the whole experience he seemed to be very busy .. like he was taking more than one interview at a time by moving from one room to another ) Now He started asking : HE :You know JAVA ? How Good are you In JAVA ? I : Sir, I have done some project in JAVA in my collage days, Now I am working on Python, Grails angularJS, ElasticSearch. HE : You are from CS Background ? you must be knowing Mutexes, semaphore.? I : told him about the semaphore n got confused abt mutexes. ( He was asking everything like it was rapid fire round ) HIM : you have worked on Python? I : I have been working in a start-up, I worked on Python,Grails,AngularJS. ( even told him that I was working in a product based start-up and what all my major contributions were ( writing controllers, services ,modals on grails ) and Google Chome Extension as first independent Project. AND THEN : "I Don't know what made him write in big letter on my resume - """SCRIPTING""" , that instance I got full of negative energy about the whole process, thought like dude you are totally at a wrong place right now. Then ( I don't know why he was in a big hurry ) he said I was done for the Day, Is there anything I wanted to know or ask. I thought best could ask will be feedback.And if he asks, I can tell that what he wrote on my resume as "SCRIPTING" is not at all correct. ( then I thought maybe he has never worked on python,grails,Angularjs or knows Python is only used forhttp://scripting.so/, I am going to work for him ? ) at Last he said that my chances are not that great, I solved only easy question, and he is interviewing other candidates too, so they will let me know about my status. and I was asked to leave for the day by him. ( Not even asked for any travel reimbursement) 5) Rejection : "I was not even mailed not even called" Again the employees(those referred) of the company got internal mail with the list of candidates who were asked to come again for the next round.  Summary : This whole interview showed,How image of the company is represented by a person who is taking interview, and how his personality can directly affect the environment of the whole process.  ( More than i was willing to leave bangalore, they were not ready to accept me at Thiruvananthapuram :D :D )

What is your favourite programming language? I told them what languages I was most fluent in. To which he followed up... Well, actually it was kind of a trick question, the best programming language is the one the suits the job. But he didn't ask me what the best programming language was, he asked me what my favourite was!