The first meeting was scheduled for 90 minutes via Skype with HR. We discussed my role in the current organisation, some achievements, salary, area of interests, job location, Spotify App/SDKs etc. After that, HR asked me 15 questions related to iOS. All those were very basic questions.
All good, next, a technical round was scheduled via Hangout with one of the iOS Engineers. At first, I was asked to create/write a project that handles network calls, response handling, parsing and to display it on a TableView. Once done, we moved to code-review. She provided me with a class on which I was asked to provide review remarks. The objective of this interview was to look at my coding style, architecture, familiarity with APIs, etc.
Then, another hangout was scheduled with one of the hiring managers to check cultural fit. The discussion with the hiring manager was around the area where scenarios were given to be handled with the cases I experienced in my professional life.
After that, my on-site was scheduled at their headquarter in Stockholm. The first round was a culture fit for one hour, they asked me similar questions as they asked before. This time, the answers were expected to be more in detail.
Then, a lunch session was scheduled with 4 employees. The process was well thought as one employee was iOS Engineer, one who moved to Stockholm a long time ago, one who moved recently and one who was native. I got all my questions answered. Very friendly and also, they gave me a little office tour.
Later, it was a system design round. I was asked to design a search system. The question had a medium difficulty and we discussed it on the whiteboard.
After that, a show and tell was scheduled. I showed them one of my open source projects. In that, I explained to them the algorithm related to binary and traversal. I was expecting discussions related to big O, optimisation, etc but it was about documentation, interfaces and ARC. Anyway, it went well. I was finished with the project in 45 minutes and with the onsite as well. In the end, they informed me to expect a final decision from Spotify in 3 weeks.
Within a week, I was contacted by one of the HRs over Skype. We decided to have a call later that day to discuss my feedback. At this point, I was excited and expecting a positive feedback as all of the rounds went really well. Unfortunately, I did not receive a call. I sent him a message but there was no reply. I thought he might be busy and this could happen as usually HRs are busy people.
I sent him another message after a week but he never responded. I then decided to not send any messages and to let him take his time. It was clear to me that I was no longer on their priority list but I was curious to know the reasons.
Almost after two weeks, the same HR contacted me and asked me if I was available for the call. In which, he told me that they didn't want to move forward with a reason that my feedback was really positive but at Spotify, they hire a candidate who has achieved 100% positive feedback. He gave me a few negative points, but to me, those did not sound like a deal breaker. Whatever the actual reasons might be, I felt a little disappointed with Spotify.