The interview process began positively. The initial interviews were smooth, well-organized, and aligned with the role. Interviewers were prepared, understood my background, and communicated clearly about expectations, which made those conversations productive and collaborative. However, the final technical interview was described as a “live debugging session with the dev team,” which set the expectation that we would review or debug real code together. In practice, the session focused on reviewing variations of a FizzBuzz-style problem and identifying predefined issues, rather than debugging realistic code or discussing real-world QA scenarios. Preparation and alignment in this final round appeared inconsistent. During the interview, one interviewer explicitly stated that they had not reviewed my résumé prior to the session and were not aware of who I had previously spoken with or which role I was interviewing for. Expectations and constraints also shifted during the session (for example, assumptions about valid inputs changed after questions were raised), making it difficult to understand what criteria were being evaluated. Clarifying questions around inputs, assumptions, and edge cases were discouraged, despite these being core to QA problem-solving. One interviewer joined late, did not turn on their camera, and did not actively participate, which made the session feel one-sided and limited collaboration. When asked about challenging or difficult days on the job, the discussion focused primarily on fault avoidance and the need to work for a paycheck, rather than on learning, ownership, or how issues are addressed as a team. For a QA role that relies heavily on collaboration and shared responsibility, this raised concerns about how problems and failures are handled. Additionally, interview materials were disorganized. The document provided for the exercise contained my name but appeared to include answers or notes from another candidate, raising concerns about interview hygiene and process rigor. For candidates with senior QA experience, the final interview may feel misaligned with day-to-day QA work such as test design, collaboration with engineers, and diagnosing real production issues. Clarifying interview format, interviewer preparation, expectations, and ownership culture in later stages would significantly improve the overall candidate experience.