Applying process and organizing the interview was arranged with a recruiting agency in a professional manner.
The first stage was the telephone interview with the company.
After exchanging facts about a candidate and the company, the second stage was announced and explained further process:
(a) practical test with given infrastructure during 60 minutes in the window of 3 days (validity of the key for ssh connection)
(b) in the positive result another test in the company office
(c) in the positive result of the (b) another interview with HR/Management
During the telephone interview, the statement was given by the company representative about there's usage AWS in full in all areas.
The task
Given access to three Ubuntu servers with the task:
*******************************************************************************************************
"Your task is to setup a CMS of your choosing on the provided EC2 instances - the only constraint being that the CMS be backed by a relational database.
Ideally, you should attempt to deploy this CMS in a scalable and fault tolerant manner i.e. the CMS should be tolerant with respect to hardware failure and should be expandable to handle the additional load.
We would like you to provide a brief runbook on how to deploy to and maintain your solution. Also, please call out any additional infrastructure required for your solution to function."
*******************************************************************************************************
The workbook was made with AWS solution.
In the 60 minutes, one DB server was installed, two other servers with CMS connected with DB, one fully operational on the internet with connected DB and time was out for connecting them in the cluster and testing the cluster.
The first answer from the company was just "wasn't past the test" and after few emails with the recruiter, an answer "somebody done more".
Comment:
Very unprofessional. Why?
The company propagate AWS solutions like the major one in the company, request for a Workbook for a solution on AWS level and top of that giving a tech task with a possibility just to use an obsolete (not AWS) technology solution is unprofessional especially not giving feedback in a professional way.
It is human if not just professional for a company to give more detailed feedback after so much work and given effort.
Conclusion:
Very unprofessional way to deal with testing of candidates - unfit and poorly prepared test, no professional courtesy for detailed feedback or feedback at all.
This interview was marked as difficult just because of mentioned reasons, the testing was inadequate to the modern, existing, and used in the company, technologies.