I would say the entire process was 6 rounds and a phone interview with the recruiter(Yes, he asked me some technical and behavioral questions).
1. Initial recruiter phone call - Resume based questions and a couple of general questions like what I liked to work on(backend or frontend), and the reasons for it. Asked me to explain a couple of projects in detail.
2. One week later I get an email to schedule a call with the manager. On this round, he was more into my knowledge on different databases(SQL and NoSQL), where to prefer either of them etc. Also, he asked the legendary question "Why should I hire you?".
2 weeks later I get an email to schedule for a panel interview. It consisted of 4 rounds, 45 minutes each. I scheduled all rounds in a single day. I honestly did not know what to expect in such a big interview process.
3. Panel interview 1: She got to know about me, my interests, how my day looked like, in my previous company. And then she started asking me a bunch of behavioral questions, and all of them were focused on negative experiences, such as,
"We don't strictly follow the scrum methodology. What would you do if you face a problem because of this?"
"Was there a situation where you had to erase your code and functionality from the working project?"
"How would you adapt to our work environment, as we don't strictly follow a format for working?"
I was able to answer everything, but for one question, I said I didn't experirence any such situation(She said she liked my honest and straightforward answer).
4. Panel Interview 2: A brief about me, and my skillset on resume. The person asked if I actually worked on some things, but never asked a question about them. And after that, it was more of them talking about the company.
5. Panel interview 3: Again, a brief about me and my skillset, why I'm looking for a new job, and what I liked in the Job description. And, he talked about his role and how the teams work at Acuity Brands. He actually said this: "I won't give you a piece of code and ask you to debug, since that's what a compiler is for". It ended on a funny note.
6. Panel Interview 4: This was with the product manager. He gave me a heads-up that this was going to be the easiest round, and ended up giving me a leetcode question. Reconstruct a binary tree from pre-order and in-order traversals. He asked me to explain if it can be reconstructed, and write pseudocode for it. Also, he asked me where additional checks can be done to make the solution robust. He understood it, and liked the thinking, and explained what he understood. I typed everything on the google doc as I thought through.
Overall it was all good and smiles till this point. They got to know me, asked some behavioral and very easy technical questions.
I thanked the recuiter after the interview for giving me this opportunity. 2 days later, he mails me that the overall feedback was very good and positive and he wanted to confirm the compensation. I asked for a decent amount within the range. He said he'll get back. The next day, he mails again that they want to interview for one more round. Till this point, the interviews went as if I was already hired. I scheduled it the next day.
7. Additional round: Again, it was resume based and my previous experience. Nothing too deep, only the superficial details. It went as if I was starting work next week.
I'm not exaggerating, I was 100% sure I already got the offer. I could not find a single reason why I would not get the job. The next day, recruiter mails me that my skillset does not match with the requirement. The job description says they need someone with experience in Java, Python or .NET. They gave such a lame reason: If it was a frontend role, we'd have given you the offer right away. My proficiency is in backend development, and I only have a brief experience in frontend development.
The entire experience turned from positive to a negative one. I'd say the interview process is a very messy one if I look back.
Either you're already hired, and the interview process is just a formality.. Or they're not going to hire you even if you're able to impress everyone.
Note: Skillset screening is the initial step in any hiring process. I asked them the same thing, and they gave me the excuse that I mentioned.
