Background: I had interviewed with Fast once before prior to this interview, so twice in total. Each time, I was not able to get passed the initial phone screen. First time it was because of my 2.9 GPA while I was still in school. After my initial phone screen which went well, they called me again to make a case for my low GPA, as they said sometimes they make an exception. (They require at least a 3.0 GPA). After that phone call, I got an email saying they decided not to move forward with my inquiry. Fast forward one semester after graduating, I applied once again for the same position. I was given a phone screen once again immediately. As I did for the first one, I looked here on Glassdoor to familiarize myself on the interview process and study potential questions. Since I had interviewed once before, in combination of additional preparation, I did very well on the phone screen. All good until this point. The recruiter then called me a week later saying that their database had been broken for a bit, and saw after it was fixed, that I had interviewed once prior. I enthusiastically confirmed, as I thought my continued interest in Fast enterprises would bode well for my second inquiry. But to my surprise, I was hit with an obvious accusing tone of "oh okay... did you just forget that you had interviewed once before?", "it would have been good for you to have told me that to save both of our times, " etc. It was definitely my understanding that my previous application would be on file, and the recruiter would be able to tell that this was not my first application. I thought that I was really prepared and familiar and was going to do really well this time around, however it was quite the opposite. After this weird phone call, I was later contacted via a short email saying after consideration, they were not going to move forward with me. I was a little disappointed as I made it a little further the first time around, and this second time, my rejection didn't seem to be based on merit. I was just really caught off guard.
My tip for people interviewing for their second time, make sure they know that you've interviewed with them before. Otherwise, they'll accuse you of trying to game the interview process with your prior knowledge.
Questions
- Explain DB to a 5 year old
- OOP concepts, probably will ask about Inheritance. Would be good to be able to explain in simple terms
- Different types of loops (for, while, do-while, I even said some higher order functions like forEach and Map)
- Passing by reference vs passing by value (this is def going to be asked)
- Tell me about a project you worked on your senior year
- This position would be 50% coding, 50% face time with clients, are you comfortable with that?
I think the company itself has great people and culture. This is just my experience with the first steps of their process.
Just for context, this was in the midst of about 9 more companies' interviews in the DC area that were more challenging.