A headhunter reached out to me for the marketing director role at their HK office. I spoke with one of the hiring managers on phone and he was nice but it was super quick and within 20 mins he told me I was moved to the next round despite the fact that it felt he didn’t know me that much from such a short convo but I didn’t mind as I was moved to the next round. Then I met with other team members in person which was a good experience as they really asked me lots of questions and it felt mutual in getting to know each other. Then came the horrible part - I was told by the headhunter that I had to prep some ideas before the final interview with another hiring managers. The interview only lasted 15 mins again after 5 mins of him not being able to hear me via Zoom coz apparently his connection in France was bad and I was told that they actually had 2 people leaving the role within months of joining and clearly wondered whether I would do the same as well as he asked me why I was leaving my current role. He didn’t ask me about any ideas I’ve prepped, so I felt like I had to salvage the interview by quickly talking through my ideas with him as I felt like he just wanted to finish the convo. At the end, I was told that my ideas weren’t creative enough (which nobody said that was a criteria they’re judging my ideas on and I went to another direction instead of providing more HK local insights instead) which I think was a lame excuse. This hiring manager doesn’t even look after marketing anyway he said so I don’t know how he knows whether an idea is creative or not. The last experience was so poor that I had to reflect it back to the headhunter - it felt like a waste of time and he clearly wasn’t briefed on who I was and never spent the time to actually get to know me at all.

I received an email from the SoFi lead recruiter for marketing thanking me for our initial call and asking me to schedule a time to speak with the hiring person. Thing is, I hadn't had that initial call. Not wanting to skip a step (and get the guy in trouble with his people), I sent him an email alerting him of the skip-a-step email and asked if he wanted to have that initial call. He did. When he called, he spent the first few minutes telling me about his years of recruiting experience and that he was qualified to answer any of my marketing questions. "Ok, great" I said. So we had the call and he asked very typical questions. It lasted 10 minutes. At the end, I asked him a few questions which interestingly enough, he could not answer. "No worries," I said. "I can ask the hiring manager." He agreed and said he would get back to me in a few hours. Later that day I sent a thank you note. Two days later I sent a follow up email, politely asking about the status. Nothing. Then a day later I got a standard reject letter saying they were not moving forward. This was a terribly unprofessional and negative experience. I expected better from SoFi, but if a recruiter is the face of the company then I dodged a bullet.