Initial contact was from the company's recruiter. Communications were friendly and cordial. I went through the standard recruiter-level screening where we make sure job qualifications and candidate experience match at a high-level and was then offered a phone interview with the hiring manager(?) at the location where the work was to be performed. The second interviewer was polite, friendly and personable however the interview format was completely unexpected and a bit, hmm.... checklist-like (for lack of a better word) - ironic given the initial job description stated they didn't want candidates who fit a checklist of criteria. (laughing to myself). The interview was immensely "rote". It wasn't an interview where you want to discover if someone has the aptitude to solve problems. It was more like an interview to discover if someone still remembers keywords after taking a Java 101 class. It was questions like, "what's the difference between a mutable and immutable object? Give an example" or, "What is an interface, a subclass, a superclass?". It was seriously like taking a test. Admittedly, in my own nervousness I stumped on one that I answered later and then didn't have answers to a couple others due to non-use in my prior coding experiences. Nonetheless they were things that I'd have been able to recall and apply very quickly with 5 minutes on Google. (I think one was on AOP). Some of the other questions were more on-point for a Sr. developer position. Expect to be able to explain the difference between a left and right join. I'd say there were a handful of questions where you're answer actually indicated an understanding of a concept rather than your ability to remember elementary answers and repeat them back to the "instructor" on the final exam. The questions about SQL were good. The other good question had to due with understanding grouping and aggregate functions. Can't recall the specific question but it was something where the answer was to group all distinct col1 values and display the sum of all the col2 values ordered asc/dsc.