OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Experience — Recruiter Rescheduled a Month, Rejected After One BQ Call

OpenAI·Software Engineer·Aug 2026
HR ScreenRejectedhard

The experience was pretty bad. The recruiter kept rescheduling. I applied in early July and was supposed to get a phone screen about a week later, but she had stuff come up plus vacation, so it didn't actually happen until early August. Then during the call she didn't turn her camera on, and the questions were all behavioral-type stuff — things like how do you manage people, what's a technically hard project you solved, how do you handle project conflicts, what's the project you're most proud of. I don't get why a recruiter was asking those traditional behavioral questions. At the end I asked if we could push the interview a bit later, since her twenty-plus days of delays meant I'd already scheduled interviews with other companies by then. She said it depends on the hiring manager, there aren't many spots left, and they want someone to start soon.

Since this screen was tied directly to a specific team, maybe I didn't answer the behavioral questions well, or maybe it was that I couldn't interview sooner — either way, the next morning I got a call telling me I was rejected.

This was for a standard SWE role.

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Curated and edited by PracHub

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Interview at a glance

Company
OpenAI
Role
Software Engineer
Rounds
HR Screen
Outcome
Rejected
Difficulty
hard
Interview date
Aug 2026
Questions from this interview
1 question

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