I was contacted by a recruiter in response to an application I submitted through their Career's site. The recruiter was friendly but not necessarily responsive to scheduling questions I posed via email. There was a short phone screen with the recruiter, followed by a coding exercise that needed to be completed in 5 business days, followed by a code review / technical interview with a senior tech lead. The coding exercise was a Go-based API app utilizing DynamoDB storage. I had never worked with Go nor DynamobDB before, so I was excited to work with and learn a couple of new things. I was told that it was OK that I had never worked with either before and that I should just do my best and that part of my assessment would be related to my ability to pick up the new concepts quickly (which I love to do). I completed the coding exercise and met all of the requirements of the assignment (I was quite pleased with the app considering I had never worked with Go/DynamoDB before). After 3-4 days, I had a virtual Zoom meeting with the technical lead and we reviewed my code. The interviewer was cordial, but seemed slightly disinterested and there was a moment of communication breakdown with one of the questions that led to me asking for further clarification - which was evidently not the best scenario. Overall, I felt the interview went OK - not as good as it could have gone, but not terrible by any means either. A few days after that, the recruiter let me know that I was rejected and that was the end of the interview process for me. I was not given a specific reason why I was rejected, so that would have been nice to know, but recruiters in general hardly ever give a specific reason for rejection, so not a big surprise really. I'm not exactly sure what it would take to get to the on-site part of the interview process as I felt I had done enough to make it to that point, but I did something to turn them off towards me. Overall, I think the product and concept are good and there is good room for growth with this company. Even though it did not work out for me this time, I do hope that an opportunity presents itself within the next months that I can apply for and get another shot.

1. HR phone interview 2. Resume-based behavioral interview with a HM 3. One-hour technical coding interview with engineers 4. Virtual on-site technical coding panel interview (I didn't make it to this round)