I applied via their official website and received a follow-up email for further details. Within 24 hours I was invited to an interview drive. Two time slots were available and I selected the 11:00-12:00 hour slot. However, my interview commenced at 3:00 pm resulting in a significant delay. I was not provided with refreshments and had to wait until I was called up.
The first meeting was with the HR department where they verified my eligibility and finalised the role I was interviewing for (the drive was for multiple positions). This was unusual as I had submitted all the necessary information beforehand. Upon learning that I was in my final year (two months left) of my engineering degree, they attempted to persuade me that the only position they could offer was an unpaid internship (which was not mentioned in their LinkedIn profile, emails or website). They also stated that upon completion of my degree I would have the opportunity to convert to a full-time employee.
I was then asked to wait outside for the technical interview. I proceeded with it despite not feeling well after the unexpected and poorly explained reasoning for the unpaid internship.
Additionally, I had previously held an offer letter from a service-based company with a salary of 3.50 Lakhs per annum. However, Talakunchi only offered 2.14 Lakhs per annum even after full-time employment. They refused to negotiate on compensation and attempted to dismiss the offer letter I already had.
I received the offer for the unpaid internship two days later. One of the reasons they dismissed the offer letter was the uncertainty in the position, whereas Talakunchi only offers cybersecurity roles. The most surprising aspect was that the position I was offered was for general testing rather than application security or vulnerability assessment testing, which I had interviewed for. I declined the offer due to the misalignment of the position, the low salary and the two-year service agreement.
(PS: I only used AI for grammatical issues in this post)