I applied online and was invited to the first screening interview with a recruiter in early March.
Interview
1. Screening interview about your profile and background.
I clearly stated in my cv that I need visa sponsorship, also I mentioned this during the interview and ask the recruiter to double-check if the company can provide visa sponsorship for me. She came back soon and approved that visa sponsorship is can be done and scheduled a technical interview.
2. Techincal Assessment (1hr)
- first 30 minutes: we discussed my background and I described my last project. The interviewer was making notes and asked about technologies. It didn't go smoothly as nearly all the technologies that I mentioned were new to the interviewer and she was asking again and again if she wrote it down correctly. Then she mentioned that she has C++ experience and I have mostly Python experience (but I believe that RabbitMQ, for example, is not language-specific). So we spent a little more than 30 minutes on this discussion.
- remaining 20 minutes: A LC hard question. I was not able to finish it. So we discussed my approach. No language constraints.
Then the recruiter reached me trying to schedule another meeting. We've agreed on a specific day, that she canceled the meeting and sent an email with congratulations that I passed and what are the next steps.
3. Round 2: Virtual onsite interview ~ 5 hours long.
- Craft demo coding session ~1,5 hours. The interviewer was nice and helpful
- Brief presentation of your profile and the project from the previous segment ~ 1 hour. Follow-up discussion about why did you make certain choices during craft demo coding, drawbacks, and potential enhancements. All the interviewers were very nice.
- 1 hour - LC medium. No language constraints. Here were two interviews that seem were not to agree about output and requirements.
- 45 min - LC easy. No language constraints.
- 30 min - behavioral interview.
The overall experience of this interview stage was very positive as all interviewers were nice and helpful. And it was a great pleasure to talk to them.
The recruiter reached me soon and congratulated me that I passed, and they are preparing an offer for me, but they are not agreed yet on my level and which team would I suit better, so need to talk to two hiring managers and discussed the opportunities. She scheduled two calls with the hiring managers.
4. Interview with hiring manager~30 min. We discussed team responsibilities, products, and my interests. Also very positive experience here.
Then the recruiter sent me an email about my visa and immigration questionary. I answered and recalled once again that I need visa sponsorship (and H1B visa application time was already over).
After this email recruiter scheduled and canceled a meeting with a second hiring manager several times.
Finally, she called me and said that unfortunately, they decided to not proceed further with me. I asked to share some details and feedback on what could I improve, but didn't receive the answer because the recruiter refused giving me a detailed feedback.
The overall experience of the interviews and interviewers is positive. But feel like the recruiter did unprofessionally. I understand that I have a pretty unusual case, but it was just wasting time from both sides mine and the company because the recruiter didn't spend enough time researching my visa sponsorship request at first, and came back to this question at the end when it was too late.