After two previous interviews today I got this like email:
“I spoke with {} recently and he shared that he’d like to invite you to a final round of interviews for the Mobile Software Engineer role onsite in {} – congrats! What does your availability look like on the following dates to come onsite to {} for your interviews (July 21 – 25, 2025 or July 28 – August 1, 2025)? The interviews will be about a half day. When I receive confirmation of your availability, I’ll begin scheduling your final round of interviews and will send you final confirmation details via email when that’s complete.”
— I’ve never had a real job besides research in University and entry level stuff like sign spinning; what should I expect when I go in? What should/shouldn’t I do?
— does this mostly mean they’re checking to see if I’m not a psycho? But if I’m not I’ve got the job?
— it might just be reading into it but they said interviews plural— am I going in multiple days? Or does this mean there are other people interviewing?
Thanks! Crazy excited after hundreds of applications. I know I can knock there socks off if I get a chance— I really don’t want to mess this up.
I can only tell you about my experiences in the past, but I don’t think you have the job yet, you might have passed some initial round of interviews and be heading for the next one. From my experience there are usually 3 rounds of interviews:
The first round is HR, this serves to filter people who should not have applied for the job, although sometimes it filters good candidates and let’s bad ones get through in general it’s necessary in large companies that get hundreds of applicants. Sometimes in this round you’ll get multiple choice test or some technical questions that should be answerable by anyone applying for the job, things like difference between list and set, or what’s a pointer.
The second round is technical, you might get a take home and an interview asking you about it, or a meeting where you talk through the architecture for a system, or even just sitting in a room talking brain teasers or similar. This round is to check your technical knowledge, sometimes people are very good with the basic questions that HR asks, but fall apart the moment you ask them something that’s not in a “questions asked in interviews” list.
The third round is a culture fit, essentially you go to the office and talk to people about random stuff, have lunch with them, etc. Sometimes there might be some coding or some technical discussion but it’s more chill. Essentially they’re trying to see how it’s like working with you, if you get to this interview it means you’re essentially hired baring you being a complete asshole or similar. This interview is to prevent from hiring people who are very good technically but are a pain in the ass to work with and would drive the productivity down because no one would like being around them.
Now, that’s my experience with interviews, it doesn’t mean wherever you’re applying follows these, but I’ve seen lots of companies have similar stances, although some put at least 2 of those in a single day. The company I’m currently with had a 4th round, but that was a special case, it essentially was a “we want to make you an offer, but have several positions available, so talk to the managers of each of the teams you would be working and see which work interests you the most and we’ll make you an offer for that position”.
Also worth mentioning that there might also still be others in consideration at this stage, and if they have 3 candidates and 1 opening, it’s still a game of who seems best. And that’s where things can get frustrating, because it could easily come down to an acknowledgement that you are very qualified for the job and they liked you, but someone else just seemed like a better fit.