Quite possibly the most unprofessional process I've ever witnessed. The in-house recruiter called me, told me about the company, and said would schedule the next steps. Two and a half weeks later she asked to meet again and while going through her overview of the company I had to stop her and say we had this meeting already. She said she forgot she already talked to me because she was on vacation and scheduled the next round for the following week. 2 hours before the interview she called to say the position had been filled. Which makes sense considering it took so long for her to set anything up.

Several people at the company contacted me independently after seeing my resume. The role interviewed for was actually senior to the position publicly listed. There were multiple (8+) ZOOM interviews across the relevant parts of the enterprise covering the relevant technical and collaborative aspects of the position. The company was open about the technology platform in use, allowing me time to investigate and try out the elements relevant to the enterprise. The hiring manager (an engineering director) didn’t actually seem to have authority to hire but instead was required to defer to multiple executives, all of whom required a separate interview. Some of the questions did not work well in the ZOOM environment and probably should have been take-home problems, the time permitted was only sufficient to summarize the initial development of a response and suggest how to follow up. The HR person managing the interview cycle didn’t seem able to manage the successful coordination of so many interviews and was unable to avoid conflicts even after asking for my availability windows. She also seemed insensitive to discrimination concerns, asking questions which I recognized from mandatory discrimination seminars as “do-not-ask” questions. I did not raise this issue at the time because I did not want to derail the interview, but it’s not a good sign. Even though the employer decided not to make an offer, the hiring manager agreed to a postmortem review interview where although she agreed my technical competence was not in question, someone else (not a direct report or peer) had raised questions about my honesty and thus the team had given my application a down check. Overall I felt the interview was a wasted opportunity for both parties.