u/Imaginary_Income5422

I went through all the rounds and got a solid hint last week that I’m the top candidate for this position. Received an email this afternoon that the position has been cancelled. It’s so frustrating. Moving on… for the third time in the last 4 weeks. Ughhhh!!!

What does this email from the recruiter mean?

I’ve booked the only 15min slot available for tomorrow morning.

—-
I hope all is well. I wanted to follow up to see how the interviews went on your end this week? I am meeting with the team first thing tomorrow to discuss final feedback. Please use this link to schedule time for us to connect tomorrow.
—-

Here’s how my interviews went:
https://www.reddit.com/r/interviews/s/IXuTZreEtm

Finished my last round of interviews with a company and I may get an offer based of how I think the rounds went:

1. First HM screening round, nailed it -> got promoted to next steps pretty much within 30 mins after this
2. Take home assessment -> also went well since I got promoted to the panel interviews
3. System design interview -> went bad per my standard and interviewer also politely said it could’ve been better when I probed for a feedback
4. Behavioral -> I prepared a project retrospective with a system diagram as was encouraged in the email from recruiter but HM was not interested in it. He went over a list of questions which I think I answered okay.
5. Walkthrough of take home assessment-> 3 interviewers and I think I pretty much nailed it. Answered all questions to the best of my knowledge even confirmed with ChatGPT that they were right.

The recruiter had said that there were 7 open positions (I initially thought he meant for the same role/position) but when I checked their career page I saw positions but all for different levels in Engineering. This matters because if there were 7 positions for same level it would significantly improve my chances of getting hired.

The recruiter also said the comp is fixed to avoid animosity between team members at the same level.

My question is, hypothetically if I was offered should I just accept it as is? Should I ask for joining bonus (not discussed as part of comp at recruiter screening). What do you think my odds are here? I think I’ve impressed 4 out of 6 folks total.

I think I messed up my interview pretty bad. Not because I dint do well, but because of the following:

1. I was asked to design a system that I have extensive amount of hands on experience in
2. Due to which I went in too much depth on some components to sound like a know it all
3. Totally missed on some of the main functional requirements
4. Recruiter mentioned Miro Board and interviewer gave Excalidraw. I was thrown off by this and screwed up
5. Asked for interviewer feedback at the end and he paused and basically said “I was looking for more” very politely
   I have 2 more rounds lined up, and I’m thinking I was pretty much rejected due to this interview.

Man system design is hard!