ZipHQ Software Engineer Interview Experience — Backend Practical on a Questionnaire Evaluator, Rejected

After HR reached out to me, we scheduled the backend practical interview.

Questions: adding features on top of a questionnaire parsing system and condition evaluator

Part 1: enable numeric question input and condition evaluator (in addition to text input)

• enable functionality
• create new test cases

Part 2: enable multiple condition evaluation

• Enable AND/OR on different conditions of different questions (on top of the previous evaluators)
• create new test cases

It was enabling new functionality inside an existing project repository. I picked Python. No AI allowed, but Googling was fine.

Part 1 went smoothly, no problems. For Part 2 I wasn't sure how to write the nested condition evaluation, because there were no example inputs and outputs, so I went in a slightly wrong direction and ended up writing only a sequential version that checks the conditions one by one.

The interviewer barely spoke the whole time. When I needed a hint, the answer was basically "look at it yourself." The attitude was cold and they didn't seem to care much. Two days later I was told I didn't pass.

There is a lot of code to write, so I need more practice. The problems aren't hard but they are vague. I think it would go better if I figured out the input and output clearly before starting to code.