You would think that it would be common courtesy to get back to someone who has been interviewing with a company for over 5 interviews over the course of two months. Apparently, they didn’t feel the need to do that. After the last interview that I had with them, they told me that they will let me know in a week or two. Four weeks pass and I hear nothing. Granted it’s over the holiday break but still, I don’t think that gives them a pass. I reach out to them and the hiring manager finally responds saying that they went with someone else. Naturally, I am upset and disappointed that I didn’t get an offer but I was more upset that I had to follow up with them a month later just to get a response.
If this sounds bad it actually gets worse. Of the 5 hours of interviewing 2 were phone interviews and 3 were in person. Now here’s the kicker. When I went in for an interview I was told that I was going to interview with three people. So in my mind, I was going to do an hour or so interview with 3 people in the room. Instead, what happened I went in at 11 AM and got out after 1 PM. Luckily I wasn’t hungry or had any plans. I interviewed with each person separate from each other. And let me tell you they all asked me the same questions. After a while, I felt like I was being interrogated to see if I would trip up and get my story mixed up. In addition to that, the questions asked were very specific looking for a lot of examples and stories. There were other questions that I felt were very probing and misleading in nature. Almost as if they were more interested in how I would react as opposed to the answer that I would give. The whole thing was rather exhausting which I probably could look past some of that stuff but after not being given the basic courtesy of keeping me in the loop I feel like the whole experience is kind of a slap in the face.
Look if you are going to schedule three hours of in-person interviewing then you need to tell that person. It is not cool not letting them know that. In addition have the decency of telling a person that you went with another candidate. That’s not much to ask for. Once a person has taken an hour or more of there time to meet with them then it’s the least you can do.