Recently interviewed at a large, well known tech company. Before the interviews, the recruiter told me that for one of the technical rounds, I would walk the interviewer through a deep technical design of a system that I choose. On the day of the interview, the interviewer posed me a specific system design they wanted to see that was totally different from what I had prepared. My design did not meet the bar and I was rejected. To add to my frustration, I probably would have studied more for the exact question I was asked had the recruiter not said anything. Should I see if I can redo the system design interview or is it all water under the bridge at this point?
I’ve had recruiters completely misleading on contents of interviews. A couple examples: - recruiter told me the phone interview will be “C++ basics.” Ended up being a CUDA interview that I had no experience in - recruiter told me the phone interview will be a “resume walkthrough and questions about my background”. Interview ended up being a ML design interview usually I just leave those interviews extremely irritated and lose interest in the company Best to take what recruiters tell you with a grain of salt. Many of them are liberal arts idiots with zero common sense
Yeah, no interviewer has gone off script and not paid attention to their focus areas 🙄 Let’s instead call recruiters idiots and bring politics into the equation. I’m sure your dismissive and ill informed attitude is why you’re x-Meta
mmm shouldn’t you reserve these dumbass comments with inference skills of a caveman for your diary?
Blaming others for your lack of preparation, classic. Most recruiters either don't tell you anything to prepare for, or tell you to learn/brush up on a degree or two's worth of material
I actually spent a ton of time preparing to answer the topic the recruiter led me to believe I would be able to talk about. I am just frustrated that their guidance was not accurate I agree they should have just told me the interviewer could ask anything
Recruiters shouldn’t leave you astray. That’s true. However effectively interviews really shouldn’t be gamed so I feel like the proper approach for recruiters is to tell candidates anything is fair game, but that’s not how our leetcode dominated interview processes work in practice
The best thing to do in this case is to tell the interviewer very nicely: “Hey, I’m so sorry, but there’s been a misunderstanding. My recruiter told me my interview would cover XYZ. I don’t mean to be rude, and I want to be respectful of your time, but I would have prepared for a regular systems design if I had known. If it’s ok with you, let’s end the interview and I can email the recruiter to reschedule. I can include you on my email to the recruiter if you would like. Otherwise, I do appreciate your time and I’m sorry to have inconvenienced you.” Then follow up with an email: “Hi Recruiter, I think there was a misunderstanding or perhaps a system error in my schedule. For some reason my interviewer thought the interview would cover X, but I had prepared for Y. I’m happy to redo it at a later date if the interview topics have changed, but I wanted to check with you before proceeding in case it wasn’t the correct interview. Do you have some time for a short chat?”
Yeah you can get unlucky. I had an interview recently for a Staff level role where I was told it was system design, but it was a coding interview but a bit more architecture and design focused. I ended up passing it anyway but was still a surprise.
Once I was told I'd do a JavaScript and Node interview. The interviewer comes in and asks if I have 10+ years of PHP and walks out when I say no. Waste of my time and gas.
Happened with me once. You should give the feedback to the recruiter. If they care enough, they will do something about it. Don’t be silent! I completely understand what you’re going through.
It’s rare to get redos in interviews. My two cents move on