Accenture Java Developer — one long technical round built around microservices

## Background
Two rounds — a technical interview followed by HR. The technical round ran fairly long and covered a lot of ground, so I'll break it down by topic, which is roughly how the conversation flowed.

## Technical round

### Microservices
The interviewer's main focus for a good chunk of the round. How microservices actually **communicate** with each other, **asynchronous messaging**, and a step-by-step walkthrough of how I'd build a microservices-based application starting from nothing.

### REST APIs
Flowed naturally from the microservices discussion — different ways of sending data to a server, **`@PathVariable` vs `@RequestParam`**, and how I'd implement **GET, POST and PUT** in a real service.

### Core Java — Stream API
The most hands-on part. I was asked to write code in my IDE to retrieve employee phone number details using **Java Streams**, then explain why **`.collect()`** matters there — not just what it does syntactically, but why it's the right tool for pulling the final result together.

### Functional concepts
**Functional interfaces** and **lambda expressions**, with quick code examples for both written on the spot.

### Project experience
Some time on my actual project work — specifically the architectural challenges I'd run into and how I worked through them.

## HR round
Much shorter and general: why I was leaving my current company, what drew me to Accenture, compensation expectations, and whether I was open to relocating.

## Verdict
**Selected.**