A woman (assistant) who is not a recruiter nor does she work in HR sent me an invitation to the first round interview which was a "discovery call", and was meant to be a video call. Unfortunately, the assistant's lack of organization was obvious from the start. Without confirming time zones or communicating her own, it was clear she wasn't handling the organization professionally. I joined the interview which was meant to be 15-20 minutes long, but she didn't show up for 7 minutes. After 5 minutes, I sent her a check-in asking if she is coming, and then she eventually showed up and said "Hi, sorry for that". Silence. I asked, "Is everything fine?". She: "Yeah.". Silence. Then, she didn't even introduce herself or give any context to the call, straight asked me to introduce myself to her. I stopped for a second and asked if she is going to turn her camera on since it was meant to be a video call, and she was late, joined from her phone, and had a bad sound quality. She said: "No, not at this time." Silence. I then asked her if we could maybe first start with an icebreaker, and she could introduce the company and the role to me, and then tell me about the hiring itself. She gave me a one-sentence general answer and asked if I had any specific questions about the company. I've never encountered anyone on a job interview before, who would say absolutely nothing about the hiring process nor show zero intention in engaging with me. I could sense that she became tense and hostile from my approach at the beginning, and after I was done talking about my background, her first question was "And why did you quit your last job?". Wow. I was laid off due to bankruptcy, so she didn't need to make that preconception. Then she continued with the same arrogant tone and asked about my motivation and why I applied. She then used my own answers about the company's transparent communication to validate her own unprofessional behavior, stating that she already knew I researched the company (I guess I encountered a medium) so she was not wasting time by talking about the same things because this call is not meant for that. And although she asked if I had any questions, she later stated that she felt like she was being interviewed and it was really uncomfortable for her. I asked 3 simple practical questions everyone would ask, but I guess it was too stressful since she couldn't answer basic questions about the salary range or the benefits. The whole interaction was super cringe and I ended up sending a rejection email to them saying I really didn't enjoy the interview and her attitude was disappointing. Meanwhile, I got an automatic notification from an AI-driven software called ReadAI that monitored the whole call and took a picture of me along with a report/scoring. When I wanted to see the full report, the website forced me to register, so I couldn't even access the data they collected from me. I was infuriated because she never mentioned she would use such software nor did she ask for my consent to record the interview in any way or take a picture of me. This fuelled my anger towards this garbage attitude and I ended up asking her to never contact me again and delete all data they obtained of me. The next level of professionalism was that the next day I got a templated answer from another person I had never spoken to, answering my last email of rejecting them, to REJECT ME, since they are moving forward with people whose skills match the job better - after the assistant stated I can be sure they will never get in touch again.
