mthree Java Developer Interview Questions
& Process

First, there was a 20-minute phone call where we chatted about the program and my background. Then, I had an online technical test with about 30 questions. This test included 2 coding questions that were pretty easy, plus multiple-choice questions covering math, physics, logic, and Java code. Finally, there was a 30-minute video interview focused on behavioral questions. Overall, the process was great because the recruiter was really nice and helpful!

I'm kind of wary of IT services companies due to their reputation, but you can't really avoid them when you're looking for your first developer job. I thought maybe mthree, since it's a European company and was recently bought by a big textbook publisher, would be better than some of the more questionable ones. But the deeper I got into their process, the more I felt uneasy about working with them. The pre-screen questionnaire seemed like it wasn't even proofread – they managed to misspell the client's name, and it's a super famous company with a really short name! The recruiter's emails were like, "What's your afternoon look like?" instead of a proper interview request. It took a bunch of back-and-forth, with me sending the same schedule every time, just to get a time for the phone screen. Then, he was half an hour late calling me. After the phone screen, there was a coding test. It was pretty similar to other new grad interviews I've done, and honestly, it was the only part that didn't set off any alarm bells. It started with progressively harder timed math problems, then three coding challenges. The first one was easy to figure out initially, but tough to optimize for the efficiency tests. The second one was surprisingly basic, and the third was just a minor twist on a typical data structure problem you'd see in an intro programming course. The first two problems didn't depend on a specific language, but the third one had to be coded from scratch in Java. After that, there was supposed to be a meeting to go over my resume and help me put it into mthree's format. Again, it involved several rounds of "What's your afternoon look like?" and me sending my unchanging schedule. We finally set a time, but he didn't bother to say if it was in my time zone or his. I made sure I was ready early, assuming it was his time zone, and ended up wasting an entire afternoon waiting for a call that never happened. He emailed the next morning saying he'd been in a meeting. I decided that a missed interview was just too many red flags, so I pulled myself out of the running.

So I had this recruiter screen, it was like 15 minutes. I asked about where people usually end up after this program, and they mentioned some cities. But then, at the end, they told me they aren't actually running the program right now because there aren't enough employers. I said no to continuing since the program isn't active. Then I got an email saying they weren't moving forward with my application. Pretty weird, right? A good experience for a job that doesn't exist, that I backed out of, and got rejected from.