Thermo Fisher Scientific Software Engineer interview experience

The recruiter had set it up so the round would split cleanly: first they assessed leadership principles, then they handed me a coding challenge.

The leadership part went well, but once I hit the coding portion I got thrown off by how they wanted me to proceed. The task was something like finding a cycle in a graph. I started by explaining my approach and thinking out loud, and then I was asked to code the full solution first and only review afterward. That shift made me feel unsettled, and when I began coding my mind briefly went blank. I recovered by building it piece by piece on what I was