It started with Linked-In application -> received an email from recruiter -> schedule a telephonic interview
In telephonic interview (video+audio+screen share) they use some software (i forgot the name) for such telephonic interview and interview will enable his/her video and i think you are also expected to enable the video and talk face-to-face for this telephonic interview.
My interview started with explaining about role (it was kind of copy pasted reading from interviewer) and then asking about yourself and current role and responsibility (2-5min)
Now interviewer without even any further question about you and your interest and what/how you can contribute to this role they straightway will give you coding question and ask you to start coding it.
In my case it was not so easy question like string manipulation /array etc but it was more of Map question and frankly speaking it was really copy pasted level 3 question from leetcode /hackerrank and interviewer also knew that this difficult question and during interview repeating that i am not expecting you to code full solution but explain how would you start and approach, I started with brute force simply solution and while explaining the approach and interviewer was in approval of what's going on in an interview, it was very nice and positive discussion thought coding, I coded entire solution to that VERY difficult question and during that even interviewer was happy to see my progress and in between was also asking questions so that i could improve further and write more optimized code.
I ended with complete solution and interviewer was happy and literally said he thinks this is the right solution and i did well to tackle the probblem.
I was very positive and happy about my telephonic (which tuned very coding heavy) round and then interviewer said he will share the results with recruiter . I was happy and was expecting recruiter to get back next day to schedule onsite interview (due to pandemic it's expected to have zoom calls as onsite interview) but even after 2 days there was no communication from recruiter and when i was checking same position on their career portal i was surprised that it was no longer available, on 3rd day i dropped an email to recruiter asking about interview results and also inquired if position is still open, I was really surprised that recruiter responded back immediately same day saying that i may not proceed with next rounds and can apply to any other roles :( I was so disappointed to read this email because my interview went so well that i was expecting an onsite interview chance but could figure out that this rejection was due to my performance or position actually getting filled even before my interview.
I am not someone fresher in an industry and worked more than 10 years with big product companies in end to end automation framework developments, I take interviews in my company for roles of SDET and i am very confident and positive that my interview went really really well and i didn't simply coded the solution but at the same time explain every bit of solution while coding, optimizing it , mind -map etc ....it was complete solution which any high quality interviewer would expect , but unfortunately all that didn't matter to interviewer, i am more disappointed because interviewer was kind of acting and speaking as if he really liked my skills and coding but it didn't look like that after interview.