Some parts of the interview, such as live coding, were not mentioned beforehand and took me by surprise. While these technical questions were not very difficult and seemed more typical for a junior role, they are not commonly used in day-to-day QA automation work and some aspects are increasingly supported by AI tools.
When I responded to questions about my actual experience, there were few follow-up or probing questions, so the discussion felt more like a checklist than a dialogue. Additionally, audio quality and strong accents at times made it challenging to fully follow the discussion.
In particular, one of the interviewers was not using a headset or dedicated microphone, which resulted in poor audio quality. I had to ask for clarification multiple times—often two or three times for the same question—before I could fully understand what was being asked. Interestingly, I did not experience these issues with the other interviewer, whose audio was clear throughout the meeting.
At the end, there was no time for me to ask questions, which made it a bit difficult to get a full sense of the team and role.
On the positive side, I'm glad these aspects became apparent during the first technical interview rather than later in the process. Based on this experience, I realized this is not the kind of team I would want to work with. I do hope, however, that this approach is not representative of all teams within the company.