Ask HN: Would you continue interviewing for a company in this situation? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Would you continue interviewing for a company in this situation?

3 pointssage768 comments

I had applied to a company for a software engineering role. Typical fullstack role, nothing special.

I was given a take home that was ok compared to a lot of others, it took me an hour to do it.

Then I had a talk with head of engineering.

Then for some reason, I got scheduled with him again, which he apologized for.

Then they disappeared for a while, but came back asking me for a virtual onsite.

That consisted of 3 rounds, all technical.

Then they disappeared for 2/3 weeks with 0 info.

They reappeared out of the blue yesterday with no explanation and emailed me about 2 more interviews.

At this point I have spent maybe 6 hours on this process with them if you add everything up. I'm kinda feeling done with them.

PS : It's not a FAANG, not even close.

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That's a great opportunity to practice setting boundaries. I would politely sum up & express what you just expressed and continue looking elsewhere. But see how they respond. If they are looking for a doormat you need to be careful not to turn it into a test of your patience.

I've seen this happen when a recruiting org has some chaos - and it can be completely unrelated to the rest of the company. When recruiters hand off candidates or when there is turnover in the recruiting/people org this kind of stuff can happen, also when new processes/procedures are added or changed. I wouldn't read into it too much but you should be able to get clarity from the hiring manager what the situation is - I always try to be really up front about situations like this when there is some organizational change so that candidates don't read into the wrong thing, but at the same time not all hiring managers are tuned into the "top of the funnel" issues that a recruiting org might have, so it should come down to whether you find the role and your direct team interesting/beneficial to your career.

I'd chat with whoever your direct manager would be about it and give them feedback so they can understand the frustration these issues cause and give other/future candidates a heads up if the process is going to be rocky.

It's been my experience that the larger a startup gets the more common these issues can be and they can also be highly variable depending on which team the recruiting coordinators are working on behalf of.

Sounds like the company I work for. It sucks and we would really want to be able to go faster, but BigCorp is full of inefficiencies and sometimes we have to wait. Possible reasons for a delay:

- We want to interview this other candidate before making a decision.

- HR needs to approve something specific (your remote location is non-trivial, sponsoring your Visa application, an offer slightly above the standard pay rate, your abscence of a degree, etc.).

- There is a hiring freeze going on and we need a special approval to send you an offer (but not to interview you).

- The person who will actually make a decision had a 2-week vacation in the middle of the process.

- There is a fire going on and we just forgot about you for a few days.

- Etc.

I wouldn't stress out too much on this.

Edit: formatting.

Did you start the interview process without asking what it entails? Usually in the first call I find out how many rounds, what technical test etc. - it's a very natural thing to ask about. Then later on it's obvious if they're changing things halfway through or they just happen to have a tedious process.

What roles have you met with (other than head of engineering) and what roles are the two new proposed interviews? How senior a position is this?

All 3 were engineers. Although I think 2 of them were front end engineers even though my experience is backend, but I can't be sure because I had a bunch of interviews lined up at that time.

Maybe that's why they have scheduled 2 more, but I haven't asked yet who will interview me next.

It's a position requiring about 5 years of work ex. Mid-senior level I guess.

Hard pass

Concur. Likely this is indicative of a poor operational culture. They asked you to invest the time to do an at-home test, but did not reciprocate by spending the time to manage you effectively through the interview loop. I would recommend sharing your experience to Glassdoor so that others may benefit from the knowledge.

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