Round 1 Interview
Something happened before the interview began, not sure if it’s my fault, but I doubt so, which calls to question the work ethic of the company or just my interviewer (idk).
So, partially my fault, but I was supposed to acknowledge the interview invite, which I did not. However, the TA did not send any chaser for me to acknowledge, and I only realised that I did not acknowledge the interview invite after waiting in the zoom interview room for a full 5 minutes after the starting time. I then left the room and sent an email apologising that I forgot to acknowledge and I thought the interview was off. But about 10 minutes later, I received a call from the TA to get on the zoom session now as my interviewer was late, and that was almost 20 min since the agreed start. How can someone be 20 minutes later for an interview and not let their interviewee know? This is quite ridiculous.
Ok so second shocker came when the fella started speaking chinese straight out of the bat. I mentioned that I will speak in a mix of chinese and english and he obliged. I can’t quite remember the details, but I don’t remember anything special here, just the usual self introductions and some questions about my resume.
Next we went on to the leetcode question. Quite a straightforward question, or so I thought when I first got it. I’m not sure if I remembered correctly, but it was to find if two trees are equal. Somehow I automatically assumed that it was a binary search tree and made use of the fact that left is < and right is >. I’m not sure why that was even necessary (maybe I remembered the question wrong). But given that assumption, I managed to solve the question with three lines of code using recursion lol. He ran against several test cases and it passed.
Next were some technical question about Java. Here’s where I screwed up more. I can’t quite remember all the questions, except the ones where I royally screwed up. He first asked me how the garbage collection in Java works, and I gave a response where, we just check if any object is not being pointed to and he ask how I can do it and what data structure I can use, which I was not able to respond. First screw up. The next and arguably the worse, was when he asked me what the keyword “finally” do in Java. Not sure why, but I completely forgot about using it in try catch in java and I said I don’t know. I think that was the final nail in the coffin for me. He then proceeded to ask some database questions which I really can’t quite remember.
Round 2 Interview
Not sure if this is considered round 2, but they scheduled both at the same time, so even though I thought I should have alr failed, I still got a second chance.
This time, the interviewer spoke in english and was on time for the interview. But in the same fashion, he took almost 10 minutes trying to find a meeting room. (like aren’t u supposed to do that before the actual interview??)
Same style as before, we started off with some self introductions and then a leetcode question which I screwed up again, nothing surprising there.
Question was something to do with finding all the permutations from a string with a slight modification which I can’t quite remember. Well I wasn’t even able to begin coding as my mind just went blank. He tried to help me but I think I got nowhere.
Next we went on to the rapid fire technical questions round. I forgot what were the exact question again, but a few really stood out. He asked me what database engine I used for mysql. I was taken quite aback as the term “database engine” was quite knew to me. I guess that’s something I have to look deep into. I probably screwed up more questions, but I really can’t quite remember them now.