There would be 1 recruiter call, 1 initial interview and 4 more rounds of interviews (1-2 algorithms, 1-2 system designing and 1 behavioral). I only got to the first initial interview. The position is explicitly on WPF skills.
The recruiter contacted me that one of the hiring managers is interested in my profile. We had an initial call to discuss more details about the position. The recruiter has been very nice and supportive through the entire process. After the recruiter call, as a take home assignment they gave an existing WPF code project to improve. After submitting that, the initial interview was scheduled (with the hiring manager). It was mentioned that that initial interview would be a review session of what I did for that assignment. But it turned out to be a behavioral/background interview, with only 5 minutes discussed on the actual review of the assignment. So, guess what, it did not go well.
I worked with XAML/WPF for about 4-5 years, but it has been 5 more years since I touched it, and I already let them know about it. For the assignment I did some brush up on some of the WPF skills needed for the assignment and submitted. But in the review, for the assignment review, he was expecting far more things than what they asked me to do. It would definitely help if they were clear on the requirements.
I was trying to show them the potential on how much I could do with just revising 2 days, but the hiring manager was expecting a ready-made WPF engineer even though I did mention that it was 5 years back since I touched it. I thought he was also on the same page, but he is definitely not. I know nobody is going to hire just seeing the potential but will only hire with proved competence in the interview process. But even that he did not give me a chance, even with all those behavioral questions, I was at least trying to give reasonable answers even though they did not mention that it was going to be a behavioral/ background interview, but the hiring manager kept asking questions upon questions before I could answer finish the answer which drove in complete different direction than his initial question, which neither gave me an opportunity to explain what I wanted to say and nor he was satisfied with my unprepared answers. I know I did some mistakes on which exact project I wanted to explain from my past experience, but when he expected in-detail details about that which I worked 10 years back is also not practical.
I definitely wanted to join Axon, since there are really good reviews in Glassdoor and their salary range is high. Anyway, it is a missed opportunity for me. I do understand I did not answer the interview questions well, but I am pretty sure the hiring manager was not clear with me on the expectations either. And I would definitely say that they failed to see the potential. It is not just on how much you know, but how well they can extract answers from you as well.
From the whole experience, here are my opinions about the hiring manager:
1. He does not care or want to understand the effort you put into your work or how much he makes you to work.
2. He will randomize your work so much that you will not be able to complete your planned tasks
3. He drills into your work to the extent where you feel disrespected about the work you do
4. He does not have proper planning about what he does or the process and/or he is not organized to put proper requirements and you will get blamed at the end for not reaching up to his expectations.
You might wonder why I put so much effort in revising WPF again. I put my profile in hired.com where everybody could look at the profile and reach out to you. The hiring manager looked at my profile and asked the recruiter to reach out to me. Even though I was clear to the recruiter and the hiring manager that it has been 5 years since I touched WPF, they still proceeded, so I thought they were on the same page with expectations as well. Anyway it was my fault too to indulge into such requests.
