I applied through and agency.
The the first stage interview was organised pretty quickly. It was over the phone, and it was easy just some very basic Java questions and very-very basic competency based stuff.
The second round was a take home exercise about implementing a restful API for some problem. The given time is way too short to give them a fully implemented and tested solution. Or maybe, just the agent rushed it, I have no idea. So, whoever takes this test, identify the most important functions and implement those. The documentation of the implemented API seemed more important than the code itself.
The third round was an on-site 3 hours face to face with multiple people. Devs, hiring manager and product manager. They had questions about how you implemented the take home test, what was the main design decision behind that, and why did you write certain things. It looks like they don't really understand the reactive programming model, because I faced questions what might be asked because of that, or they just wanted to make it sure, that I understand it. So, using the "plain old" Spring MVC may land you the job, but I wanted to expose, what I think about the future of REST. The WebFlux is clearly not in their interest, especially not when you combine it with routing technics using a RouteLocator bean. So no new things, use legacy tech if you want the job!
There is a coding exercise during the face to face as well. I failed that, because I totally blocked when 4 of them were watching me... (and basically the whole office could do that, because it was projected to a big-big screen.) Yes, that was my problem, it was my fault. I must admit that. But according to the agent that wasn't the reason why they rejected my application. The agent said I didn't seem passionate... What is more passionate about Java development when you have your home project and you contribute to open source projects, and you answer Java questions on popular sites as well? How can anyone be more passionate? I did not got the response from the agent for this question. And on the top of that, it is not a valid reason behind technology choices, when you do something with the most modern stuff, because you think that is the future, and we should move away from legacy techniques. Which are working, that's true, but there are better solutions on the market.