There were speed bumps and unprofessionalism at every step of the interview process. I’ll explain each step and then go into what speed bumps / unprofessionalism that were in place.
1. Recruiter reached out to me via email, I respond rather quickly. 4 days later I hear back from him. I understand that things come up, so I didn’t think much of it.
2. Recruiter had an initial phone screen with me where he was writing broad notes to my very detailed answers. For example, I mention an AWS service that I’m not too familiar with and he just writes down that I’m not familiar with AWS.
3. Phone Screen with the CTO, the call itself wasn’t too bad or difficult. My only issue with this was, he was 22 minutes late to the phone screen. Again, things happen I understand but I’m starting to get a little suspicious at this point
4. Code Challenge
Part 1; The recruiter and I had set up a time to start the code challenge. I didn’t receive the code challenge at the specified time and date. Not until 48 hours after when I was supposed to get it, did I receive it.
Part 2: When I finally received the code challenge, I wasn’t given an environment to test it in and after that was all settled and was finally given an environment, I was 5 hours into the challenge
The code challenge however was pretty straightforward
5. It was originally supposed to be me coming on-site but just to be sure, they added in one more phone screen with a senior engineer.
6. Travel and Onsite
Travel: Travel was okay, other than them only paying for 1 night hotel stay.
Onsite: Sat down with CTO, CEO and Software Engineers. One of the engineers was not prepared for the interview and was looking at his phone the whole time.
7. Offer
They came in with an offer, I said I needed to think about it, they came up a little bit, I said I still needed to think about it. They asked me what do I need in order to start a little earlier, I told them and they said at this time they don’t want to proceed with me. I have honestly never seen that in my career before where they present a verbal offer and then take it back.
Miscellaneous things:
Constant miscommunication between recruiter and CTO.
Also, they boast about their app being Top 10 in the Apple App Store, when their app isn’t in the App Store at the time of this writing (02/25/2019). When you click the link on their website, it says that the app isn’t available in this country or region.