This was the worst interview experience I have ever had in my entire career. They clearly have absolutely no respect for applicants or their time. Furthermore, HR should consider company-wide training for gender discrimination.
I got HR phone screen by recommendation of a colleague fairly quickly. HR was very helpful & I got put through to 1st on-site interview within 2 wks.
The following wk (before on-site), I got an unexpected call from a different HR person to schedule an interview for a position for which I didn’t apply in a division I explicitly didn’t want to be part of as I heard bad things from all my colleagues. It turned out the 1st HR person submitted me for a role without my consent. I took the phone interview, it’s my policy to never turn down an interview opportunity. During this call, 2 people were on speakerphone at the same time. 1 who spoke too softly was far away from the mic, I struggled to hear anything she said & had to keep asking her to repeat herself. The other interviewer spoke extremely loud & was sitting right next to the mic so it would hurt my ears every time he spoke as I had the volume on my headset all the way up to hear other person. One of the interviewers was extremely terse, aggressive, & flat out rude. After only a few min of background questions, he directly asked me what salary I made at my previous role. Normally when you have a discussion like this with an HR rep it is very polite & you can have some back & forth where you politely deflect or ask them what their target range is. I tried this tactic which I have successfully used numerous times previously, & the interviewer actually said "No, absolutely not, I'm not answering you. You need to tell me what you made in your previous job or we are not continuing this conversation". He basically freely admitted that he is happy to discriminate against women who may have been underpaid at a previous role & are trying to achieve equal pay for equal work at a new company. He had no interest in even considering paying you more than what you had made at your last job. So if you're a man who was already fairly paid, you're ok but if you're a woman seeking fair pay you can screw off. Needless to say, after such a poor experience I had no interest in continuing the interview process with this team.
The on-site interview for the position I had actually applied for didn’t go much more smoothly. The 1st interviewer was 20 min late, he thought an HR rep was going to pick me up from the lobby when he was supposed to come get me. Then all the sessions following the 1st were rushed & ran over time due to the late start. The 1st interviewer was respectful, he spoke to me as a peer & we had a good technical conversation about the product. The 2nd interviewer mansplained to me where the tailpipe & where the engine are located on a car. He actually flipped my resume over & started drawing a helpful diagram. I was flabbergasted at how ridiculous that situation was but politely thanked him for that info & explained what I already knew about the product in order to continue the conversation. The next 2 interviewers were together for the last interview. After asking me to talk more about myself & my hobbies 1 of them actually asked me if I did my primary car related hobby just to be able to boss my husband around, then both laughed. Rather than outwardly being angry, I awkwardly laughed, said of course not, & changed the subject. Despite all this nonsense, they indicated that the interviews had gone very well & would call me back within 2 wks. It was an interesting product with a challenging role so I didn't reject it outright despite negative experiences so far. Women in engineering have to deal with this kind of BS no matter where we work.
I heard nothing for 2 wks, after 3 wks I politely reached out; no reply. 5 wks later, I got a call asking me to come in for the 2nd on-site interview. I scheduled promptly & went back. That interview again went well, it was down to me & 1 other candidate & I was assured that again, they would reply within 2 wks. This time 8 whole wks went by without anyone responding to polite inquiry, & I got a call from an HR person asking me to set up an interview for yet another position that I had not applied for! After asking questions about what was going on & what happened to the role I interviewed for they said whoops, sorry for the miscommunication, that was given to an internal transfer. They were never planning on getting back to me. Not only that, but they asked me to drive all the way to the office for just a 30 min initial interview with the manager for this new role. So they wanted me to take off an entire day to drive to their office, take the meeting (which would prob be 15-30 min late as all prior meetings were), & drive home, instead of just doing this over the phone as is customary. It's obvious to me this company has no interest in being respectful of people's time.
