I had applied a while back but after 3 weeks a recruiter emailed me saying Groupon is interested. First the recruiter talked (different from the one who emailed) and the manager talked on a later date. Manager was knowledgable and pleasant. Initially he seemed interested but towards the end, I sensed he had some reservations. Still a technical phone interview was arranged. This technical interview was done by a person who was not a master of the subject. Questions were bookish and not measuring any problem-solving ability or your range of experience. My replies were rated based on the match to the answer list he had. In the course of one of the answers I said you should enable slow query log. He wanted the exact syntax to do that which is amusing since the syntax can be googled in 10 seconds. Interviewer wanted to know what should do I do before doing ALTER TABLE. I said "take a backup". His answer list had "check for space". So my answer was deemed wrong. I told him Galera cluster configuration with multiple servers we have in my current job which he did not understand. I answered not less than 75% of his bookish questions so was amused when the recruiter called after 8 days saying my experience was not up to the mark. I have been rejected multiple times in phone interviews in the past and know to take it in my stride, but this was unusual.