I applied for a particular role in AI team with Python as a programming language, but clearly mentioned in my cover letter, that I was proficient in C#, but really wanted to learn Python now. I decided if company could provide a training they would contact me. They did. I had a very informal chat with in-house recruter and made him aware I'm interested in the office on Liverpool street, but South Kensington office is too far away from my house. After this I was given a Hackerrank test, which had nothing related to testing and automation, but contained purely programming puzzles with algorithms and matrix. Okay, I solved as much as I could and used Java, because I had some experience in this area and had a choice from Java and Python only. After two weeks of silence I got an email with invintation to face-to-face interview in South Kensington office. I didn't feel the catch at that point. Face-to-face inteview consisted of two parts: general chat with QA manager and technical part with one Senior SDET. People were very friendly and supportive, but... they interviewed me for a position of Senior SDET with Java for the backend team based at the South Kensington office. I realised this in the middle of the interview and just decided to proceed because I was already there. Moreover I didn't meet anybody from this particular team and was told they will have another round of interview with me later. As a result I was told there will be two more rounds: another one technical interview with people who didn't bother to appear at the current one and general chat with CTO if technical interview is succesful. I decided I fed up with this process and it's better to stop it now. To summarize: I applied for one role and mentioned that location was very important for me. I spent around 4 hours on Hackerrank (2 to understand how it works, another 2 for technical challenge), I spent 2,5 hours to be inteviewed for a position I never applied for, with people who were not a part of the team looking for a new engineer. And two more rounds are on their way. I can't say I wasted all this time, but if I knew at the beginning what was the role, I would reject it.

Applied via external company. Completed Babylon Health online testing challenge. Never got any feedback from the test. Had an interview with the head of QA. She came across as conceited and self centred. I was also interviewed by a Senior QA Engineer, who couldn't be bothered to have her camera on during the interview.