ADP Software Engineer (UI / React Developer) interview questions

Recently, I had one of the most frustrating interviews of my career. I applied for a UI React Developer role, expecting questions around React, JavaScript, component lifecycles, hooks, state management, performance optimization, maybe even accessibility or testing. But what followed felt like I had mistakenly walked into the wrong interview room. They started asking things like: "Have you worked with Java?" "What is polymorphism?" "What is an interface in OOP?" "Can you explain a LEFT JOIN in SQL?" "How do you secure an endpoint on the backend?" At first, I thought maybe they were just curious if I had some full-stack exposure. But the entire interview turned into an interrogation on backend concepts—none of which were mentioned in the job description. I was left completely confused. Why ask backend-heavy questions for a React UI role? What made it worse was that the interviewers themselves didn’t seem prepared or aligned. It felt like they had pulled a generic question set without reading my resume or understanding the role they were hiring for. Honestly, it was the most disconnected and discouraging interview experience I’ve ever had. It’s disappointing when companies don’t respect a candidate’s time or match their evaluation criteria with the actual role.