The interview process moved fairly quickly as they knew I was in the late stages, but that was pretty much the only good thing about the whole process. It was incredible poorly communicated in writing and a terrible candidate experience with HUGE red flags. I applied online for the Talent Acquisition Partner role. A member of the Talent team reached out for a Sourcer opportunity after seeing my profile. Once we hopped on the call, he looked into the ATS and noticed I was approved by two Hiring Managers for a Recruiting Partner role, not the Sourcer opportunity he reached out for. In this call, he just made sure we were aligned on expectations of the role and it was a fairly easy call. He was the coordinator for the remainder of the process. I moved quickly into the Hiring Manager video call. It lasted 45 minutes. She was pretty equipped to set the typical expectations for the call. When she opened it up for questions, that's where I saw flags. I asked about the Sourcer-Recruiter relationship and process to which she admitted there wasn't a streamlined process. That is a flag for me because that leaves much room for misinterpretation and lack of process. It seemed to me that the team is not set up for success and that they have difficultly aligning with Hiring Manager expectations. There seemed to be a lot of areas for improvement and that they are not scaling efficiently. The lack of process in such a big organization shows that it is more of a startup environment but with too many hands in the kitchen. I asked her about why she joined TikTok and she didn't seem too excited about the company itself but the opportunity to be a managerial position. I left the interview not feeling confident about the opportunity because of all the flags I caught but willing to hear more. I moved into my next call with an HRBP. This is where I received a horrible candidate experience. The interviewer was constantly looking things up on the screen and not being attentive; completely different from an interviewer taking notes to what I was saying. This was evident when she repeated a question to an answer that I just spent 5 minutes talking about. When I provided a different angle to a question, she straight up said "if I didn't ask about that, you don't have to talk about it", by then she acted like she didn't want to continue interviewing me. When it was my turn to ask questions, she was providing impersonal answers and being incredibly curt and short. Q: What is your hiring philosophy? A: "What do you mean? That is too broad of a question. If you give me another question I can answer that but that is not specific enough" Q: What was the state of eng hiring 3 years ago and how has it changed to that state it is now? A: "It hasn't changed. We have always looked to hire smart people who believe in our values. 3 years ago we want to bring on the best talent and we still are today." Q: What are the challenges of hiring for eng at TikTok? A: It is the same challenges as other companies. We are hiring against competitive companies. It's hard but we are hiring 5x better than the average. Q: TikTok is currently in hypergrowth, how do you ensure it is scaling efficiently? A: That is something the CEO thinks about every day. All her answers we short. She did not give me additional insight into how it is to work at TikTok, all her answers were high level, she never gave me a personal take on her experience, and she was not selling the opportunity at all. A HUGE flag is that she has not expressed any improvement or change to being there for 3 years and that is a big shock and turn off. For an HR professional, she was lacking the empathy, insight, and intrinsic qualities to provide even a good candidate experience. The lack of streamlined process made it a poorly communicated process. They do not give you the heads up that you will be receiving email communications from the partner company, ByteDance. They provide the bare minimum on the interview invites: a Zoom link, name of the interviewer, and a PDF. They do not provide the title or team of the interview, the research is limited as they do not have a candidate facing page, and communication is sloppy. I would not recommend interviewing here. For a company this big, it is running like a Series A startup with no process or structure. If you do, good luck! Go in with an open mind because it is not for the faint of heart and all the work is put on the candidates' side; instead of the team empowering and encouraging you through the process.