The interviews themselves were great; I very much enjoyed meeting the team. I've never given feedback on an interview process, but I highly respect the hiring manager, and would like to support his team's growth. As issues during the interview process were the reason I rescinded my interest, I'm hoping that sharing my experience helps improve it for future candidates.
Interactions with recruiting were inconsistent, unsupportive, and occasionally rude. Here are the highlights:
- The first recruiter I worked with ghosted me. I emailed her twice over a week long period, and did not hear back. I don't know what happened to her, and hope she's alright. A week later, I started receiving correspondence from a second recruiter, without a hand-off or explanation as to what happened to the first recruiter.
- After I'd completed numerous steps, including a time-consuming cognitive test, I asked the second recruiter about next steps; she told me there may not be any more interviews depending on other variables. She could have simply relayed the next steps, and told me she'd be in touch. I reached out to the hiring manager for clarity (which is a rare necessity), and received it: they needed time to complete other interviews before moving any candidate to the next step. Totally understandable, and quite a fair approach.
- Without any explanation, the next day the second recruiter contacted me with a form email explaining I was being progressed to the next step. It was impossible to be excited because this was a contradiction with the hiring manager's stated process of interviewing all candidates before moving any of them forward. I did not accept this next step, as I was concerned this lack of support and clear communication was indicative of how the organization itself operated.
- Out of 5 recruiters I emailed to let them know I'd accepted another offer, Pluralsight was the only one that did not reply. This confirmed I had made the right decision.
While the interview process itself had numerous steps, and a cognitive test that I found unnecessary, I was willing to jump through all the hoops because of how excited I was about the product and the hiring manager. Being treated with disregard by recruiting, however, was not something I would allow.