At first, I was pleasantly surprised by LinkedIn's personalized and enthusiastic recruitment. I was internally referred for a role within their Talent Management space and pretty quickly contacted by their recruitment team to move forward. However mid-way through the recruiting process, they completely dropped the ball and I was left with a very unfavorable view of the company. I had a brief phone screen with the initial recruiter and right away could pick up that she was a contractor and didn't know much about the role or the culture. It seemed like she was reading off a template of sorts, which I'm sure is the case, but very forced and unnatural. However, she was pleasant and eager to move me forward to talk with the hiring manager of the role on-site Hiring manager on-site visit was a nice surprise. I was welcomed at their office with a little goodies baggie and my own personal LinkedIn mapping based on my profile. Compared to other interview experiences, I thought this was a great buy-in to working on their team. The rest of the on-site was pretty standard, it went well and she was very excited to bring me on to for the final on-site interviews with several others. She walked me out and said she'd like to move forward pretty quickly. I left thinking I would hear form the recruiter within a few days. A full week and a half passed and I heard nothing. I reached out to the recruiter in charge and waited days before hearing back anything. When the recruiter finally reached out, she seemed very overstretched and frazzled, as if this role was a bottom-tier priority for her, which might have been the case but should never be felt by the candidate. Over a month later, I was brought on for on-sites. I was only given the confirmed interviewers the day before and found out upon arrival that one had canceled. The recruiter host at the office did not even seem like she was ready for my arrival, and was very late to greet me and take me to the room for my first session. The office wing I was in was completely dark and uninhabited, as if it was being cleared out for demolition. Not a very positive start. There was no warm welcome, there was not even water offered. My first interviewer was still late, and time of the interview that I was told was different from what she was told. I was under the impression we had 45mins, she thought just 30, and was 10mins late because she didn't know which room I was in. The last interview was the hiring manager's manager, and she seemed like she was extremely rushed and didn't really have the time to conduct the interview. She seemed stressed and it was a pretty formal, stiff interview. She even commented on the fact that there were several key things missing, such as an iPad with my day's schedule and interviewers. She seemed more concerned with the fact that I didn't get the iPad then the fact that i was interviewing to join her team. It seemed like there was a lot of back end chaos going on that no one wanted to admit to, and that they wanted to sell me on loving their job and loving the "challenge" of working in such an environment, but that it was a hot mess right now. I did not get a good vibe from her at all and I did not leave that experience feeling good about the team, the work environment or the role. I did not hear back from the recruiter for quite some time. I was pretty turned off by the last half of the candidate experience, so I was not even will to consider accepting, should I even have been given the offer. I waited again for weeks, and finally had to reach out several times to close the loop. I eventually got an email, not a call, but an email confirming I would not be made an offer. That was fine with me, however, the email itself was extremely insensitive and slightly insulting. It was pretty pretentious and I was doubly confirmed that this was not the environment for me. I've learned since then that I am not alone on having a pretty poor candidate experience, as several other colleagues I've talked with since then have come out and shared the same "dropping of the ball right in the midst of being considered". It's a shame that for a company that prides itself on being the #1 recruiting platform for the world, it is substantially suffering from an inconsistent candidate experience that is only hindering it's own internal search for talent.