A recruiter reached out to me and mentioned that a particular department's Team Lead was very excited to talk to me and set up a Zoom call.
During the Zoom call, I found it unsettling that the Team Lead chose not to share their video, citing a leg injury. This unexpected situation added to my unease during the interview as I was sharing my video.
Unfortunately, communicating effectively was a significant challenge due to a pretty significant language barrier. The Team Lead's strong accent made it difficult for me to understand what they were asking, leading to frequent requests to 'repeat the question'.
They asked very few questions. They asked if I was familiar with CMSs, localization, and CSS animation and then abruptly opened the floor for me to ask questions. Maybe they were not happy with my responses. I assumed they wanted to get the interview over with quickly, but I still asked all the questions I had and did my normal interview performance, regardless.
Then, to my surprise, at the last second before ending the conversation, they made sure to mention that this engineering team, in particular, was actually under marketing and that many people were uncomfortable with that. So they were still considering me?
For a lead role, I would expect to be asked certain leadership questions, and I would expect the interviewer to share their screen on a Zoom call; otherwise, just make it a phone call. Instead, this was one of the more odd interviews I have ever participated in.