Applied on LinkedIn, first round is with a recruiter just to get to know each other, received an email after 3 weeks for the next round, stating that the interview will be with an Engineering manager, but the meeting was scheduled with the CTO. I asked what the context of this meeting with the CTO would be, but no response from the recruiter. But the previous email from him stated that with a hiring manager, the interview is all about Java, Spring, Microservices and Databases. So, I prepared for the interview and jumped into the call, which was for 1 hour, but ended after 30 minutes. I hope I am not a fit for this role (I still have not received rejection, but I expect that). This is because I can answer a question, but the CTO expects the exact answer that he had in his paper/document that he is referring to. When I started feeling that he was expecting a word-for-word answer that he was looking for, I started losing interest, and I said I didn't know the answer to 2 consecutive questions (Out of that 1 question, I don’t know the answer), then we ended the meeting. Because even if I try to answer that, he will look for the exact word he had in his cheatsheet (I experienced that for the last 4 to 6 questions). But if someone is preparing the Java Books line by line and remembering all possible answers, you can get an offer from this company. I started applying for jobs recently, and I am encountering this kind of interview, which I should avoid in future.
Tip: Prepare Spring Dependency injection, Bean scopes, Java Streams API, JUnit, etc. Read and remember all the methods and its use from Java doc page so you can exactly answer the question. All are well-known topics, but you must answer the exact word they seek. So I suggest to give 10 answers for 1 question, out of which one will match their answer in their question bank.