First, I interviewed online with a recruiter from their Canada office. The recruiter explained what they are looking for, and the interview process for very clear. After that, the recruiter told me that they would share my CV with the engineering manager and contact me if they want to continue.
Several days later, they reached me and asked me for several time slots to schedule an interview with the engineering manager. We planned a date for the first interview. In that online interview, the manager explained what the Amsterdam office is doing and their responsibilities. The manager also asked me my past experiences and some Golang questions. At the end of the interview, the manager told me that they would send a take-home problem, which I have two days to complete.
They send the take-home problem Friday evening and expect me to send the solution the following Monday morning. The take-home problem was an ordinary CRUD application. I completed it over the weekend and sent them back. Several days later, the recruiter reached me and told me that they want to schedule an online technical interview, which is 2 hours long, to discuss my solution and ask some architectural questions. This technical interview consists of two parts. The first part is solution discussion, and the second part is a system design interview with some coding.
Two developers attended the discussion part of the technical interview. They inspected my solution deeply and asked some questions about my design choices. They weren't rude and didn't try to demoralize or irritate me.
The manager I interviewed before and another developer attended the second part of the technical interview. In the beginning, they asked me to design and code a part of a system. After that, they asked me several questions about how I can improve the designed system. At the end of this interview, they will reach me in several days about responding to this interview.
Several days passed, and there was no response from them. I tried to reach them by asking if I am rejected since there is no news. The recruiter told me that everyone is on vacation and asked me to wait until the end of the holiday season. I tried to reach them again after the holiday season, and I responded, saying they would contact me for some explanation. Several days later, the recruiter got me to explain to me what happened. For the time I interviewed with them, there was only one person's job position available. Of course, they were interviewing several people. As the recruiter told me, they have a much better candidate than me. The recruiter told me that if that candidate rejects the offer, they will continue with other candidates; maybe I can have a chance to continue the interview. Also, the recruiter told me to wait for them to call me. As you can imagine, no one called me.
The process was good until the end, when they started ghosting me and didn't share that they are only looking for one developer. I spent a lot of time for nothing.
