Interview Process

My interview process so far has been fairly uneventful. I've worked at the same company twice now, although in different roles. I do not anticipate re-applying to work there full time. The process to apply was fairly easy. The first summer, I didn't even have a technical interview for the role. This was, however, because the internship had me working in the learning resource center. It was not intended as a software-engineering role. However, the summer was partially saved by my ability to volunteer to lead the high-school intern team through their android application development project. For this past summer, the process was slightly more involved. I had one initial interview on the phone with a person in HR followed by a "technical" interview with both of my future managers. I say that the interview was "technical" only because it involved my managers asking me general knowledge questions such as, "what is a race condition?" In a way, I feel like the company had already decided to hire me before the interview even started - they did not even attempt to test my coding ability. This frustrated me. I expected to be required to do some actual coding, but it seemed as if my manager's did not really take the time to form challenging questions.

Currently, I am preparing for an interview with a large tech company. Their process is much more involved and has, overall, been very pleasant. What really has made the experience for me was that it was all initiated through a recruiter on Linkedin. At each step, the company has asked me which dates work the best for me, and accommodated my programming preferences.

Although I have had an (overall) good interview experience, I think that many companies do not do a good job with their overall process. They don't ask interviewees about their strengths and attempt to force antiquated or ineffective interview methods onto them. Because of this, they alienate many qualified candidates for the jobs that they so desperately need to fill.