Casumo Java Developer Interview Questions
& Process

I interviewed with Casumo a few years back. It started with an HR call where they asked about my salary expectations, which I couldn't provide without more information. Then, I was given a Java project to complete. After finishing the project, I had two technical interviews, each lasting over two hours. They were long, but the interviewers were nice and we had a good chat. Following the technical interviews, HR emailed to say I was accepted and asked for my salary expectations again. I gave them my expectations, but a few days later they replied that they couldn't offer that much for someone from 'xyz country.' I found this response unprofessional and discriminatory. They should have just said the salary was too high for them. I'm glad I didn't join them, as I imagine such attitudes would surface eventually.

So I applied online and got in touch with a recruiter who was super professional and communicative. The process was pretty straightforward: first, I had a chat with the recruiter about the job, the company, and my career goals. Then, there was a short 20-minute technical task, which was cool because they gave me about a week to do it, understanding that people are busy. I feel this is a good way to start because it's not a huge time commitment if it's not a match. After that, I had a more substantial test to complete on my own time. Since I wasn't in Malta, we had a video call with some developers to go over the test, talk about other technical topics, and I got to ask them questions. Finally, they made an offer. The whole thing took about three weeks, which is pretty standard in my experience. It wasn't easy, but it was a great learning experience, and it felt like they were focused on understanding how I think and if I'd be a good cultural fit for the team.

First had a chat with HR, then got a task to find bugs in some code. After that, there was a coding challenge to build a video rental application, like others have mentioned. I saw some bad reviews about how they evaluate the tasks, but I thought 'maybe they just used a lot of if-else statements' and decided to give it a shot anyway. Sadly, that wasn't the case, and I regret spending about 2 days on it. The feedback was really disappointing; for example, they didn't understand what rich DTOs were, and when I mocked a DTO method, they called it an 'abuse of mocks'. Some other comments were just odd, like saying I shouldn't use a Price class to store prices. They also mentioned I didn't use configuration enough, even though I explained in the README that I wasn't focusing on that, which was permitted by the task description. They didn't point out any actual problems like something not working, violating rules, or transaction issues. I didn't learn anything from their review. I told the HR that with that much work, and if the application works and is mostly implemented correctly, it should be the starting point for the interview discussion. Even though I explained why I thought each of the 5 review points were correct, she said, 'we don't review applications twice'. Then she added, 'at this moment we are not in a rush to hire so they want to go for people with new skills which can add something new to the team,' which was really stupid. They saw my CV beforehand, and nothing changed, so were my skills finally not what they were looking for? In conclusion, if you have time to waste, give it a try.