McGraw Hill Interview Questions
& Process

The interview started with a recorded interview where I had less than 2 minutes to answer a few questions. I got 3 tries to record and pick the best response. Then, I had a recruiter call. The recruiter seemed really distracted and not into my answers at all. It felt like I was just another interview for her to get through. She even sounded like she was driving or shopping. She called me by my last name, and when I corrected her, she got annoyed. A few days later, I got a rejection letter (addressed to my last name) saying I didn't move forward.

This hiring process was way too long and full of pointless steps. I got to the third round, which involved a video presentation. I figured since I'd already talked to people in the first two rounds, they were seriously considering me. But apparently not. McGraw Hill's team only watched about ten seconds of my ten-minute presentation. I found this out a week later when I got a standard rejection email. The hiring manager said he liked me but hired someone with more experience. So, it was a waste of time making that video. It wasn't even watched and didn't affect the decision. If they already know who they want to hire, they should just say so instead of making candidates jump through hoops for a fake sense of fairness. For those of us who are unemployed, every unnecessary task is time lost that could be spent on other job opportunities. If they want to be decent, they should be upfront and just say it was a matter of experience, and skip the extra steps.

First I talked to a recruiter, who had a list of basic tech questions to screen me. Then there was a 1-hour tech interview with a lead or principal engineer. This was followed by a 2-hour tech panel interview with other leads and the hiring manager. One person on the panel was really bad at interviewing and should be trained by the company. This person asked me to solve a Java async problem, and when I used a different tool than expected, they got uneasy and tried to criticize my solution. They spent a lot of time nitpicking instead of moving on, and another interviewer had to step in. The interviewer then laughed at my solution, turned off their camera, and left without a word, which was incredibly rude. I lost my confidence after that but continued answering questions for the rest of the 2 hours. I then told the recruiter I didn't like the interview and that the interviewer needs to learn how to conduct interviews. I've interviewed over 500 people and never behaved that way.

The process started with a hiring manager screen. After that, there were a series of interviews where I met with team members in pairs for 1:1 conversations, each lasting 30 minutes. It felt like a long process, but I learned a lot about the business and how things are structured.