I was recommended to Fidelity by a friend of mine who is a current employee. I was contacted by a recruiter who asked me to give my availability for an interview with the engineering manager. The interview was scheduled for a few days later. I was not provided any details about the meeting's nature and I made the mistake of assuming its purpose was to cover the role - which I didn't know much about - and my experience. On the day of the interview, the engineering manager arrived a few minutes late and asked to step away as soon as he connected. No problem, I assume he has a busy meeting schedule. When he comes back we talk briefly about the role and my experience. He then asks me to share my screen and open my notes app. He wants me to solve a coding problem and does not want me to use the tools I use every day to solve problems in web development. He wants me to reverse a string. Since I don't have string or array methods memorized I had to tell him that I wouldn't be able to solve this problem without additional resources like documentation. He asks me to talk through how I'd solve the problem. I do this and get no follow-up or feedback on whether my answer was acceptable. I was taken off-guard and at this point, I'm very anxious that I'm not doing well. Then arriving 15-20 minutes late a principal engineer arrives, introduces himself, and immediately instructs me to open a code sandbox of my choice and create an input that will display its value in a separate element. This time I may use whatever documentation I need to solve the problem. I use React and after what felt like probably too long, I solve the problem. I am now extremely nervous and anxious. We move on to Q&A. I ask about the role, the stack, and other Fidelity related questions. I know this didn't go well and expected to be rejected. The thing is, It's not really my fault it didn't go well. I was given no notice that I should expect a technical assessment for the FIRST interview with the company. The interviewers were polite and nice enough. I also appreciate that the second exercise was practical. A thing I've had to do before several times. I wasn't as quick or as thorough as usual because of the surprise nature of the assessment. I didn't hear anything about the interview. I never received notification that I was rejected at all. Every other day or so I would log into workday and see that the status of my application was still "Interviews in progress." Today it has been nearly 3 weeks since the interview and I log into workday to find that my application has been moved to Inactive - Not selected to proceed. Again, no email, no notification. I was effectively ghosted by Fidelity. This process from employee referral to rejection needs a good hard look. I am not impressed.