The recruiter I worked with was very helpful and friendly. Everything went smoothly until the actual phone interview. The phone interview went terrible. First, they called me 5 minutes late. They did not introduce themselves (only their names) but did not tell me what they did. Jumped straight into the questions. Started off with the "Tell me about yourself" textbook question which is always a turnoff. You have my resume, why aren't you prepared? Gave me a vague troubleshooting question, which I respect because I think they were trying to get at my troubleshooting steps as a QA. So when I asked questions about what I'm allowed to do vs what I wasn't, i.e. "Do I get access to the code or is it black box testing?" they told me "Yes you get access and this is black box." So I tried to answer with both, but I could not tell over the phone whether they were liking the answers or if I should have been steered in another direction. They then asked me a programming question and only gave me about half an hour on it. In the half hour I was asked to create a Stack with two caveats: there is a "getMiddle" method that returns the middle element of the stack and it must be of O(1) access time. Naturally any O(1) access time would be an array, so I used that, although ideally I would use something like an ArrayList in Java. Which brings me to my next point: When I asked "In Java there is a collection called ArrayList. Can I just use an ArrayList? I feel like that would be cheating because it seems like it would defeat the whole purpose of the question." and they told me they weren't experts in Java, despite the fact I told the recruiter I would be most comfortable in Java. If I am going to take a programming test with someone, they better at least understand Java. Poorly planned. Anyway I am explaining my algorithm and I can tell in their voices they are getting a little impatient, maybe because time was running out, or maybe because I am not getting the answer they were looking for. Twice I had to whiteboard my algorithm step by step and they could not understand it, i.e. "Increment counter, go to array[counter], push() the element on", etc. It was a poor use of my time. It really sounded like they didn't want me to do something in particular but since we were short on time I think they just called it quits. Finally I did not get much time to ask about the culture because we started late. I asked what they enjoyed most about LinkedIn and what they could change about it, and one of them told me the good: "work with brilliant people and the space is open so it is very collaborative." What they would change: "I want to learn from the brilliant people" so it sounded very contradicting. If the culture is so collaborative, what is stopping you from learning? Did the interviewer just give me part of her career plan? If so, does that mean my career plan will also have an obstacle "There are brilliant people here but I can't learn from them unless I put myself forward"? Is that really the culture I want to work in? And since we started late, another group of people were waiting for the room so you can tell they were in a huge hurry to get out. As an interviewee it never feels okay to be rushed "out of an interview." After the interview, the recruiter emailed me a rejection saying they wanted someone "more technical." While my solution may have not been the prettiest, it got the main O(1) job done, and I don't know what else could have been detrimental to my technical skills. Overall what I got from the interview: 1) they are unorganized 2) not as open as they claim they are 3) a sense of stubbornness What I didn't get from the interview: 1) My job role 2) Their job roles 3) Their day-to-day lives 4) any sense of culture other than the negatives I mentioned above 5) what a great company they are 6) any feedback about my technical skills. I've gone through multiple interviews and the recruiters have always called me to tell me where I had fallen short and always encouraged me to brush up those areas and try again.