Firstly, I applied through a referral on LinkedIn. I easily got a referral as people there are really helpful. Then, I received an email to schedule my first interview, which was a 15-minute phone screening round that I scheduled for August 16, 2024. On the day of the interview, I was informed via email that the interview needed to be rescheduled, which was totally understandable. I rescheduled the interview for Thursday, August 22, 2024. The interview went well. The person conducting the interview was very professional. He asked for my introduction and some basic questions, such as whether I could commute to work four days a week, and he explained the company policies. One thing I would suggest is to be prepared by knowing at least the basics about the company, so I read through their details thoroughly. The interview concluded successfully, and 15 minutes later, I received an email to schedule my next interview. They gave me options from Monday onward. Since I was out of town on Monday and Tuesday, I scheduled it for Thursday. On Thursday, I joined the interview call on Microsoft Teams. The interview started with a basic introduction, and then we moved on to some fundamental questions like “What is OOP?” and “Explain each pillar of OOP.” Other questions included “What are ACID properties?”, “What is paging?”, “What are joins?” and “Explain each type of join.” In total, I was asked 9-10 questions, and to be honest, I answered them very well, correctly responding to about 9 questions. Then we moved on to the DSA part. He asked me to write a program to print the minimum number of elements between two repeated elements. I provided two approaches and explained how they would work, including their time and space complexities. He then asked me to implement one of them. I started implementing the solution using a HashMap. I completed the implementation within 3 minutes, but then encountered an error stating that the HashMap didn’t contain the ContainsKey function. I tried to resolve the error, but my interviewer said it was okay, explaining that the issue was likely due to the online compiler. I asked him several times if he was sure, but he seemed to be in a hurry and kept assuring me that it was fine. Shortly after, the interview ended. Within a minute of the interview’s conclusion, I received an email stating that I was not selected. It seemed pretty obvious that the interview was just a formality. It felt as though they had already chosen their candidate before my interview. I had practiced for the interview for an entire week while managing another job, preparing each night after work. The interview went well, yet they didn’t provide any proper reasons for not selecting me. Why this is wrong: What they did was unfair because the interview went well, and I provided correct and thoughtful answers. However, despite this, they did not give me any proper reasons for not selecting me. This lack of transparency and the apparent formality of the interview process, despite my preparation and performance, reflects poorly on their recruitment process. It’s essential that companies provide candidates with constructive feedback, especially when the interview seems to have gone well, so candidates can improve and understand what went wrong. Instead, I was left without any closure, which is both unprofessional and demoralising.