FJA-US Interview Questions
& Process

There were three interviews for the job. First, I chatted with the Director of Operations. Then, I had a phone call with the team lead. Finally, I had a Teams meeting with 3 people on the team. I really connected with everyone I talked to. They were all so nice and welcoming, which made me even more excited about the possibility of joining them!

So, I didn't realize it was for a junior position at first. They actually moved me up to interview for a mid-level role, which was still pretty junior given my experience. But, I figured why not go through with it for the interview practice. The process involved an initial recruiter call, then a technical phone interview, and finally an in-person technical interview. The phone technical interview was mainly standard questions about Java, object-oriented programming, and some behavioral stuff. For the in-person interview, I met with the manager and a senior developer from the backend team. The manager's questions felt a little challenging, but not outright uncomfortable. He seemed a bit taken aback by my resume and wanted me to put numbers to my 10 years of experience, so his subsequent questions felt more like 'gotcha' questions than genuine inquiries. On the other hand, the senior engineer's questions were purely technical and totally appropriate for the role. There was a math or logic puzzle to see how I think, which I think I could have handled better. The interview wrapped up with a coding exercise where I had to build a Stack class.

I was contacted by a third-party recruiter who set up the interview. The company requires candidates to pass an online test, which is fairly easy. After passing, the recruiter called me a 'super star' and said they wanted to interview me. The company liked that my profile had some matching buzzwords, and since it's around Christmas when clients slow down, they're cycling candidates through. I was greeted and had to fill out an application form asking about travel and overtime willingness. I spent about 3 hours talking with two people in person and one over the phone. They mainly discussed my experience and how I've used technologies like Java, Maven, Spring, EMF, Eclipse, and OSGi. During the conversation, they asked about my experience with Eclipse plugin development, SWT, and JFace, which weren't on my resume. They were surprised I hadn't used them, even though I never claimed I had. I realized the job description didn't match what they were looking for. The feedback I received was that I apparently lied on my resume and my resume didn't reflect who I am. This reinforced my belief to always work with a principal recruiter.

It was kinda hard to get in touch with HR, and when I finally heard back (after two days), I only knew it was them from the email address. The HR person mentioned a screening call and then an office interview within a week. I didn't realize the screening call was a technical one, so I didn't do great on it.