The technical interview was really poorly conducted. The interviewer wasn't clear and seemed unprepared. During the system design element, the interviewer wouldn't answer basic clarifying questions and kept interrupting me to basically repeat what I had said in slightly different words. I was then asked some questions about Java and spring boot. I have a transcript of my interview and I validated my answers afterwards which were clear and well explained but in my feedback they said there were gaps in my technical knowledge. One of the worst planned interviews I have had and I don't feel like it was designed to see the true capabilities of the candidates.

Probably one of the worst interviewers in London, just go in and interview with them if you want practice or want to feel how interviewing was back in 90s and have a laugh. Tech interview consists of 3 parts but it goes fairly random from asking you what spring boot annotations are to pair coding some easy leetcode style question to systems design within 90 minutes.

The expectations during the interview also felt somewhat unrealistic, as the focus was mainly on bookish answers. In today’s development environment, it is not practical to expect developers to write code purely from memory or recall every method. A better approach would be to refine the evaluation process to assess practical skills more effectively. Training interviewers to align with this approach would also help in identifying the right talent.