I was interviewed by their HR who was a bit late to the interview and I was waiting. It was a friendly conversation and she was trying to gauge whether i had the drive to be a part of a startup. All said and done she liked my profile she said i should hear soon from their COO for my second round of interview. I let a week and a half pass but no communication on when the second interview would be.On following up it seems the position was filled and the HR didn't know of it. I have dabbled in startups before but this behavior was strange especially if a COO doesn't make it a point to get back to a prospective employee. I had seen my fair share of negative reviews online but this experience just reiterated what is already there on WWW.

Brief phone call with HR, then scheduled phone call with COO. COO did not make the phone call and did not notify. When I called back,first time was busy, second time they picked up and put me on hold. Finally, we rescheduled for the same day. He called a bit late, did not introduce himself on phone until I started the conversation. Child crying in the background, COO told me he was stuck in another appointment and thats why he missed the previous one - Duh... sure, but that's why you step out for 1min to tell someone to communicate to the interviewee to not wait for nothing - but no such common sense here!! He introduced himself and enumerated the last 5 things on his linkedin profile. He said not to believe the bad things written online about the company (first red flag). He answered some of my questions, partly with concrete answers, partly with cliches such as "we want the people who understand the data to take the decisions". I rephrased the questions and got the same answers. Silence. I thought he was interviewing me? More silence. I said I don't know what to make of this, I do not have a clear image of the status quo, and how to get to where he wants to get. He proceeded to say that even though I did not introduce myself, I can come into the office and meet the CTO/CEO. I explained that he did not ask anything, that he only talked and answered some questions. He said this was "part of the test". Well, I am guessing the silence was him reading through my CV for the first time. Not a good sign. Of course he didn't know what to ask if he did not prepare. If however that was part of the test, then we have an example of someone who has the impression that he is doing you a favor for giving you a job - which is not somewhere anyone wants to work. He then proceeded to say that if a "head of" is not outgoing and cannot sell himself, he sees it as a "huge problem and we cannot have that". He seems to have missed the point - the more we talked, the more he convinced me not to continue my application. We closed the conversation with the idea that I come in the office and meet face to face. But with this attitude, I wrote back 10 minutes later to pass on the opportunity. If you, reader, like me, do not like working for megalomaniacs that believe they do you a favor for accepting you to spend most of your life in their office, then do yourself a favor and skip this one.