Bad recruitment example 323234

This is a story for my friend C. He didn’t know what was behind this old tweet

So I did a quick summary but I didn’t do the honours.

Here goes the detail. I won’t name the company (it’s bigco, a big company here in the UK).

The process started through a friend of mine that had joined BigCo. We had worked together and he wanted to work with me again. I wanted it too. And I was interested in BigCo. So he pinged HR. A recruiter took a look at my CV, and was quite interested in contacting me.

The recruiter and me spoke over the phone and scheduled a tech face to face interview for a couple of days later. At the lobby I was supposed to ask for him, and he will lead me to meet a panel with three specific interviewers.

I arrived and asked for the recruiter. He wasn’t around and hadn’t left any information. A lovely woman from HR came to reception. After me explaining about the recruiter and the panel, she told me at least one of the members of the panel was not going to be there because he was the whole week on a personal trip. Why two days before the recruiter had told me otherwise, beats me. There was a second name that wasn’t there either.

At least I got my interview they were expecting me and we had a proper tech chat that went, according to me, fine. I was told the next step would probably be a coding exercise.

A week later, no communication, I asked the recruiter about any feedback. There was no response.

At this point, you must know that I’m a bit insecure. I perceive people are happy with my work but impostor syndrome hits hard anyway. Very hard.

So I assumed the interview had gone wrong and went to my cave.

The friend that had originally tried to bring me in, kept me asking if I knew anything. I did not. He apologized every time.

Two months later (8th March to 8th May) out of the blue, the recruiter wrote to me and asked if we could speak on the phone.

No apologies on the mail.

We had a call. He explained that there had been some changes in HR. He asked me if I was still interested in the role. I said I could be. He explained he was going to send a coding test just after we finished the call, and that I could do it whenever I felt ready.

No apologies on the call.

I was thinking if I should do the test or not.

But I didn’t receive the test that day. In fact, I didn’t receive the test until the fourth day. For four days there was nothing.

For four days my mind would say “he’s scum” and my gut would say “Gonzalo you’re less than nothing”.

When finally the test came, I decided I was not going to do it.

And that’s the story.

Maybe it’s an extreme case, but a good example of many many processes in the tech industry.



First published here