I suggest to read through this review even though it is long if you are going to apply.
I applied to morningstar online when they had an opening for a storage engineer position. I am a highly qualified and certified storage professional. I received an email from an Hr intern for scheduling an initial phone screening with the hiring manager. I took the phone interview and it went very well. The following day I was contacted by the main recruiter (previously i was contacted by her interns) and she mentioned that they want to move forward and they are impressed with my interview and would are currently at offer stage. She said they are waiting on just one approval which will be approved by next day noon. I was a little surprised as decided to hire me with just one interview but was convinced that my skillset was rare and the one interview went very well. But to be fair she mentioned that this is still a tentative verbal offer but not a consolidated offer but 99% it should be approved by the one remaining manager.
Next day I was contacted by the senior HR person again and this time she said sorry manager liked me but he still want to see what's out there. I was appalled and sent a letter explaining why I would think that I am a perfect fit for this role.
After a few days I was contacted back from the HR saying they would like to have another phone interview with a director in london. I took the interview and did very very well. Next day I got a call from the intern who scheduled my initial interview and she said they are still looking for other candidates and she have not heard anything back on my first interview and probably they would like to move on. Then I mentioned to her that I had been in contact with the main HR person and have taken interview from the director and she apologized for not being up to date with my application coz she is part time and had not had chance to synq with main HR. I accepted her apology and she said she will get in touch with me regarding my next step in the process.
I was contacted by the main HR person again to schedule a skype interview with 8 members of their team and I took a half day off my work and took the skype interview and again did very well. I was told that interview went very very well and they are waiting on a director level approval and I should know if its a yay or nay in a day or two. then the next day main HR person called me and told that they wanted to go ahead and present me an offer but they did not have budget for me. I was dumb stuck. I could not comprehend why would any one would set up a requirement without budget approval. She finally told me that she won't know when the budget would be approved and asked me to pursue other opportunities and she would contact me back when they approve budget. After all this I was completely exhausted by the methods and wrote a letter to their IT director, Hiring manager and HR person stating my impression on their hiring policies and how that will drive away talent from them and mentioned to accept my withdrawal from the application.
Two days later the HR person called me in set up a meeting with hiring manager and surprisingly they made me an offer. They did not mention a thing about the letter I wrote to them earlier. My mistake was to accept the offer letter (I was very very uninterested but in this economy i decided to let go off previous reservations I had with this company) and they put me through their background verification process. After two weeks the HR person called me back and told that they want to revoke the offer because they feel this is in best interest of the both company and employee. I could not be more glad that they revoked as i found their true colors of organization before I moved from texas to Chicago.
I know this is quite a long post but this an experience I have never had with any other much much larger organizations and felt like people who are planning to apply or even been offered position or as a matter of fact even employed should know. They are highly unstable in their decisions and it reflected in all through their hiring process.