[Your recruitment director needs to reconsider her interviewing skills and approach—simply relying on AI to generate a few behavioral questions and conducting the interview inattentively will not help you identify truly capable candidates.]
I went through two rounds of interviews. The first was a typical HR screening call, focused mainly on my background and some quantifiable data—quite common for this type of role in the industry.
The second round was with a director. She arrived 20 minutes late, and just as I was about to leave the meeting, she finally joined. She seemed surprised that I was still there. I wasn’t surprised at all—in fact, I could somewhat understand her, because I believe their day-to-day work must be extremely busy. This impression was reinforced during the interview itself: she spent almost the entire time preoccupied with her own work. With AI-powered note-taking in place, she didn’t need to take any notes, and even if she had the habit of doing so, there really wasn’t much that required recording. Yet even after I had finished answering, she would remain focused on her screen and pause for several seconds. The delay couldn’t be explained by internet lag. This was hard to accept. Imagine waiting patiently for 20 minutes out of understanding and respect, only to be met by someone who seemed indifferent, as if simply showing up was enough. That was discouraging.
As for the questions: she asked nothing beyond behavioral interview questions—not a single attempt to learn more about my background. (Perhaps I can only assume that the recruiter in the first round had prepared her well, given how busy she was.) She spent 40 minutes firing off six or seven behavioral questions in a row. Of course, behavioral questions have their place, but they largely test a candidate’s exam-prep ability—if you drill them like LeetCode problems, you can succeed, but what does that really prove? That you can write and tell stories? Not to mention that many candidates simply rehearse STAR-method stories in advance. A rapid series of so many questions makes it difficult to respond perfectly in real time. I’d also suggest avoiding overly repetitive behavioral questions within a short 10-minute span. As a candidate, I genuinely wanted to say that my previous answer had already addressed the question, but I knew repeating myself—or pointing out the overlap—wouldn’t help my application.
In the final Q&A, I asked questions that required real thought and reflection on the team’s day-to-day work. It was clear she was sharp and had given these issues serious consideration before. That deserves respect.
All in all, though, it was not a good interview experience.
