I posted my profile on Hired.com, and got a call from the Wayfair recruiter who was very nice and helpful. Then, I had a phone interview which was just a coding exercise, and cleared it.
Then, I was called onsite for a full day 4 solid rounds of interviews involving database design, coding exercise, system design, and cultural fitment. I did pretty good in all the rounds, and according to me, my best round was the system design round.
However, when I received the feedback from the recruiter, I was told that I did great in all the rounds, except for the system design, which according to me was my best round. When I researched online for the system design (URL Shortner), I found exact same design that I had done during the interview. I'm still wondering how else would the interviewer have designed the system? After days on online research, I'm unable to find a better design than what I did in just 40 minutes during my onsite interview. Not getting the offer wasn't painful. Instead, the round that I was counting on, turned out to be the one that the interviewer didn't feel was upto the mark. Even during the interview, the interviewer seemed very impressed with my design. I'm not sure what happened during feedback. If given a chance, I would still want to understand how else the interviewer would have designed the system. I'm still not convinced with the decision, and feel that it was an unfair decision.
