The initial HR screening was positive and structured. It provided a unique look at the company through the perspective of a recent hire, which made the onboarding process feel transparent. The recruiter was respectful, responsive, and clearly outlined the next steps. The second stage, a technical peer interview, was inconsistent. While it began as an engaging discussion about industry passions and high-level concepts, the tone shifted abruptly. I was allowed to speak at length on those topics, only to be rushed through technical "trivia" questions that prioritized verbatim documentation over the ability to articulate and apply concepts through real-world examples. An offhand comment regarding my leadership style further signaled a lack of alignment. The feedback I received centered on communication, structure, and risk analysis. I found this confusing as these specific topics, particularly prioritization and risk mitigation, were never raised during the conversation. While receiving feedback is generally preferred over "ghosting," the points provided felt disconnected from the actual dialogue that took place. The company mentions diversity frequently, but the interview process didn't seem set up to value different types of talent or varied professional backgrounds. The experience led me to believe the culture might not be the right fit for someone looking to have their expertise nurtured, but rather an exact match and formula for a particular problem that they have. It’s a bank after all.

I am posting this review as an over note to the candidates who gives their whole effort in securing a new job. I have had an interview with the DKB recently and had a very disappointing experience. Even though the initial conversation went well, the very next was the coding challenge. The challenge itself tags that you need not have to spend more than 4 hours, but actually if you work it as an end to end use case, you need atleast 1.5 days to finish it off. I am stating this on the basis of the qualities you consider while coding. for example , defining a well good algorithm, structuring your code, writing end to end test as well as unit tests, managing performance optimization techniques, maintaining accessibility standards, writing CI/CD etc. Adding all these features to your exercise will cost you more than a day for sure. Even though you add all of these quality standards and submit a solution to them, their response will either be "not to the level for a senior role" - which I got as a review- or if its more than of a perfect structure, their response will be "too much AI coded. nothing to discuss more about the challenge" and these responses will reach out to you after they send a survey of interview to make sure that they are on safer side. I wanted to let , the recruiters, know that we as candidates spent our brain and energy for this challenge and we deserve at least a discussion call about the work we did. Or at least you should explain in challenge what is your expectation as crystal clear. You are writing in challenge that we do not expect a pixel perfect implementation and just wanted to know your problem approaching skills and believing that we do more than enough for the challenge and get a vague dump response from you. Here I doubt your credibility as well. My challenge was published in a public repo and its was cloned by more than 100 times by unique users within the next five days. I wonder how such a huge traffic can come to a repo which you state that is not upto the standard of a senior developer. Or I doubt if you trying to make candidates work for some of your applications feature for free of cost in the name challenge. Dear candidates, please be aware of such traps and secure your ideas carefully.