Talking with recruiter: Back in January, I got contacted from a recruiter that was working with Citadel. I don't want to get into too much details, but they needed a Software Engineer to help develop applications for their security team. I had a few conversations with the recruiter and working with him to schedule the rest of the interviews. I would continue working with the recruiter asking for updates, but it seemed the Citadel team was very slow and indecisive about what they wanted to do. I would always get updates from the recruiter that the Citadel team changed their mind about the interview process. Hackerrank: After about less than a month, I got a link to hackerrank. This Hackerrank quiz included 15 multiple choice questions and 1 coding problem. The coding problem was a easy-medium leetcode problem. It didn't take me long. The multiple choice included some coding questions (like given this snippet of code, what's the big O time or space or what lines to remove to make the code do something else) and some design questions. Now, I need to clarify these design problems were absolute WACK. They asked things that were out of scope of regular technical interviews. Thankfully, they were multiple choice, so I could give an educated guess. If it was a onsite, I would not be able to answer them. They asked questions about write back cache and strict quorum based voting for replica control which for some of these I had to google. I must have done well enough, because I went to the next step and scheduled an interview with one of Engineering Managers. EM Interview: During this interview, the manager said this was just a "vibe check". We talked about what I worked on and what the work and life was like at Citadel. No technical or behavior questions. Just a casual conversation and getting to know more about what I worked on. Conclusion: After a few days, me and the recruiter hopped on a call to talk. I got a rejection. The recruiter said I was rejected because "I wasn't passionate enough about my previous work. It sounded like I only did it because I was required too." The recruiter said he defended me to the Citadel manager, but the Citadel manager was confident on his decision. This probably why they haven't been able to find someone within the past 6 months. If I passed this round, I would have still had another 3-4 different rounds of interviews. YoE: 8+ Previous TC: $250k
These firms interview a lot and extend very few offers
I had exactly same experience. Passed the OA, recruiter -> hm -> failed. No technical questions asked except in the OA
Originally, I was going to do the OA at first, but then Citadel changed their mind on the order of the interviews. It seemed they really weren't secure in what they were looking for. But consider how much they pay, I could see an argument to be patient and wait for the perfect candidate.
Interesting experience OP thanks. What was the pay band for this position?
The recruiter said it was about $300-400 TC. No RSUs. Mainly base. It was very close to pay ranges on levels.fyi. Citadel has been notorious for having high salaries.
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Thank you for sharing, OP. That sounds like a lame excuse but at least you can move on. For what it's worth, your WLB at Microsoft is much better than what you would have had at Citadel.
Yeah, the recruiter said it was a lame excuse too. I think he wanted to find someone that would be willing to live and breath for the company they work for and be able to make ANY sacrifice for the company they work it. I guess I didn't emit that.