Interviewed with the hiring manager and he had a list of technical questions he was required to ask to see your thinking process, if you know different algorithms, when to use/whats the difference between arrays and linked list etc.

I met a hiring manager at a career fair event at a conference. We talked about my interests and the company and I happened to be what he was looking for on his team specifically. This is a very rare way to go through the hiring process, but also is why one on one interaction can be very important to being hired instead of just being part of a a list of resumes to be looked over in an email. It took a lot of time because HR lost my resume twice and my manager had to personally make calls to get my name back into his list of candidates. (This is why networking is important.) I had one more on site interview where I was asked the usual behavioral questions and then spoke with my future Team Lead. He asked me a couple of technical questions and a couple months later, I was hired. This process will almost always take a long time.