

Crafting the worst interview process in 8 easy steps - brudolph
http://pennyhacks.com/2012/01/06/crafting-the-worst-interview-process-in-8-easy-steps/

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dangrossman
I had almost exactly that happen to me as a college student. It was the worst
interview experience I've ever had.

I set up an in-person interview for a java developer position over e-mail. It
was rescheduled a few times and I was given the address at last minute. It's
the middle of summer, I'm in a suit (as is customary for interviewing on much
of the east coast), with no car in a big city -- I had to leave pretty early
to take a subway and walk to the place.

When I got there, the manager I was supposed to interview wasn't there. What
was there was three guys in a cramped two-room space mostly filled with
cardboard boxes, some of them open revealing electronics of some sort and RC
cars. Their product was apparently some kind of software for radio controllers
sold to the government or something like that, I never got the details. One of
those guys pointed me to their 'other office' where I'd likely find the
manager. That meant I was now late, through no fault of my own, but running
several blocks through the city getting sweaty and flustered.

I was told the office is in the basement at this address... it's a huge old
building and the basement looks like a warehouse with some rooms around the
periphery. None of it looks like office space, just metal stairways and dim
lighting. I eventually do find a door with the company's name on it and knock
and inside is a man, in a single chair, behind a single metal desk, with a
folder on it. Nothing else in the room -- this is no office. This man is in
fact the manager I was meant to interview with, who offers no explanation for
why he wasn't at their actual office that I was first sent to... and explains
away the current decor as new space in the process of being set up.

I don't even remember the details of the interview at this point. If I wasn't
a fresh young student I would've bailed before even getting to that point, but
I did at least make the decision that there was no chance at all I'd be
working for these people before I left.

I didn't hear back from them either.

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mwd_
My worst interview went as follows:

-I was contacted by a company that found my resume and decided I was a "great fit" to an opportunity they had. They described a great, technically rewarding position.

-3 phone interviews and approximately 1 month later, I go to the in-person interview.

-HR guy says to me when I get to their offices that the original job is unavailable and asks if I'd like to interview for a much less desirable junior position. Also, by the way, I will be interviewed by completely different people and given different questions.

-Against my better judgement I stay there and go through 3 hours of whiteboard type questions (stuff like "implement atoi" -- I consider this legitimate, but I don't need to do 5 or 6 of them) with 3 sets of 2-4 people. It began at 11 and by the end I was pretty tired. HR guy came in and asked how I was doing around 1, told me it was pizza day (for everybody else), then left me alone for 15 minutes before some more questions.

-They say they'll call within the next 24 hours with an answer. 2 days later I get a call saying that they didn't think I'd be a good fit because I didn't seem enthusiastic. I was not enthusiastic because by the end I did not want the job.

During the same period I got offers from the other companies I applied to and
took a job superior to the one available at the evil company. No way am I
sitting through that sort of thing again!

I recommend people walk away when this BS happens. It's not worth it.

~~~
moocow01
I guess at least they told you about the position change. A friend of mine
graduated as an engineer, got a job at a top company and on the day he started
they told him that there was an organizational shift in the department and he
would have to take over for a data entry spot. Same pay but data entry. They
said it was temporary (it wasn't) but since he was fresh to the working world
he stayed at it for a couple years.

~~~
mwd_
For my case it was not as bad as data entry. It was a build system job vs.
graphics job (I have a grad degree and the equivalent of a few years of work
experience), but they had primed me for something specific. Questions like
"how do you feel about regularly working until midnight and hounding people
you have no authority over who break the build?" did not help.

I assume that they were mostly incompetent rather than evil, but it doesn't
matter from the perspective of a company attracting talent.

Many people looking to hire are clueless of this and cannot explain why they
have trouble hiring (a guy once simultaneously complained to me that he
couldn't find competent programmers and complained that I wouldn't do small,
sporadic 3D geometry jobs for $50/hr). I have noticed a common smugness
amongst people hiring (despite the fact that many quickly reveal themselves to
be of less than stellar technical ability). This is probably a bad attitude in
a market where the best talent can quickly get multiple job offers and where
not every person hiring is a jerk.

Part of the problem seems to be that many companies get by on hiring cheap
workers. In particular they take advantage of students just out of school.
That doesn't work very well because it is hard to retain those people, but it
appears to be enough to keep many companies afloat.

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orbitingpluto
My experience today was not nearly so arduous. But it was a doozy.

A _recruiter_ contacted me. She asked if I had _7_ years experience with
Windows Server _2008_.

I proceeded to tell her about my W2k3 and W2k8 experiences.

"I'm sorry, we're looking for someone with 7 years experience, at the very
least, with Windows Server 2008."

She expertly disengaged from the conversation and that was that. I tried to
explain...

I'm trying not to think about it. I hope this experience doesn't percolate in
the back of my subconscious and end up as an aneurysm.

~~~
bermanoid
Reminds me of the late 90s, when recruiters were routinely posting jobs that
required "8+ years of Java experience".

The worst part was, I'm sure they found plenty of people willing to add that
line to their resume without hesitation...some of them probably even got
hired. Sigh.

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curt
Had this recently happen to me a few months ago. They did three phone screens
over two weeks but missed dates a few times. No biggy, shit happens... Said
they were flying me out a certain date and then the day before said oops we
didn't get approval, I finally get out there do a 4 hour interview and they
forget to schedule me with the CEO even though I point out the mistake the day
of the interview. They call be the next day asking to schedule that interview
for the day after even though I'm now 2000 miles away. I said I'd be out there
again in two weeks after my move. When I get out there I contact, contact,
contact... No Response... They get back to me a few weeks later and I tell
them to fuck off and there wasn't a chance in hell I'd ever work with them.

...and then they wonder why they can't hire anyone.

I can't tell you how many companies did shit like this, just not this bad, and
I was interviewing for senior level positions. It's huge red flag.

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devs1010
After dealing with the nonsense from potential employers, recruiters, etc for
a little while now I think I've become a bit more seasoned and can spot the BS
quickly, this is an important skill to develop so that you don't waste
precious time with dead-end leads.

If someone emails you regarding a job, immediately press for details (if there
weren't many in the email). I occassionally get emails from idiot recruiters
who think that secrecy is the best way to go and won't tell me which companies
they are representing but want to get me on the phone 'just for a few minutes'
to talk about these amazing opportunities. I usually give them one more chance
and email them to explain that its important for me to research potential
employers before spending time on any sort of application process and that I
would need the company info to go any further. If they don't comply, I
blacklist any further communication from them.

Basically, you need to know what a company is all about before wasting any
time, once you have at least the name of the company, go to their website,
read any reviews you can find from past employees, etc, 'google map' their
offices to see if its a dump or if it looks like a viable place of employment.
There's no shame in blacklisting communication from people who are wasting
your time, I now make it a regular part of sorting through the emails I get
regarding 'opportunities'

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foz
Unfortunately, the same kinds of companies love to do the same thing to
"vendors".

Multiply the time wasted by 5x and throw in a 10-page proposal, and you have
what is called the RFP process. Huge amounts of time wasted in writing,
crafting solutions, meetings, and budgeting. And all for no response. At. All.
That's what having your own development shop is like.

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thedufer
A Google recruiter pulled this on me over the past month and a half, where
"sufficient" in step 4 was equivalent to both "3 times" and "until he says
he's taking his offer and breaks off all contact". It was infuriating,
especially coming from a company who is supposed to know what they're doing in
terms of treating programmers.

~~~
gcp
Google knows its a highly desirable employer so they can get away with it.

~~~
mlvl-spb-rus
Then Google is __*.

------
X-Istence
I've had the same process happen to me. After the third time this happened to
me I had enough and I simply started realising that these companies didn't
value me enough that I shouldn't waste my time with them. The phone interview
times being off were the biggest issue. I don't want to play games, either you
are serious about wanting to hire me or you are not.

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Sanddancer
Oh, you forgot to mention asking blatantly illegal questions during the
interview like, "do you have kids?"

~~~
ragmondo
... I am lost as to why that is a blatantly illegal question. I am
interviewing for a au-pair right now and it's a very relevant question, as I
sure it would be for any job that it's critical to have people present for (ie
if I know you have kids, then I can make sure if you have a family emergency,
I can cover it) etc etc.

However.. "are you planning to have kids ?" ... now that is a different
matter.

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moocow01
Oh you actually missed a step...

Make candidate do a take-home assignment that requires a day of work.

~~~
loupgaroublond
I would consider this very valid pre interview. It's a bit mean; ideally an
assignment should take 15 minutes to do. The advantage is, if someone does it,
does it well, you have a really good indicator if that person is a good fit.

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mihaifm
They also gave the the wrong address once. The building number was 29Z and the
sent me to 292. It just happened that I ran out of phone credit so I couldn't
call them. I just wondered around town for a few hours before heading home.

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alexchamberlain
The biggest step I have a problem with is not getting back to someone. You've
decided within a few hours, or at least a day or so, whether someone has the
job. Is it too much to ask for you to send a copy and paste email to say
"Sorry, not this time"!?! Argh!

Luckily, I now have a job when I leave Uni, so don't have to go to another
interview for a while. :)

~~~
demallien
Actually often you haven't decided in a matter of hours. In a typical
recruiting cycle, a company that is hiring might organise interviews with a
half-dozen or so candidates after pre-screening. This is typical because you
can't go through the whole process with one candidate, then if you don't like
them, start a new search for another candidate and so on - if you need to do
six or so interviews to find a good candidate, a serial procedure like that
could drag on for 3-4 months.

So, knowing that other candidates are also in the pipe, candidates can't
expect to be told whether they have got the job until after all of the
candidates have been seen. I don't think that this is unreasonable on the
company's part.

That said, the company should be able to give you a date for when the decision
will be taken, and that date should be less than a day after the last
interview, ie as soon as is possible.

~~~
alexchamberlain
Yes, I'm approaching this from a relatively simplistic point of view, but...

You have 6 interviewees. Get them to your office on one day. Find 6
interviewers and 6 rooms. Put each interviewee in each room and rotate the
interviewers. Discuss, decide and communicate.

Is it that hard!?!

~~~
demallien
In a word, yes!

I'm assuming you've never actually tried to do this. But even so, you could
try this experiment for yourself - try and organise an evening out for you and
six of your friends. Not any six mind, but start out with a group of six and
say "I need all these six and only these six, no-one else will do". Now have a
look at how far you have to plan ahead to get all six to be available. If your
friends are anything like my friends, you are looking at needing about 2
months warning.

Job interviews are even worse. They last longer. They happen during office
hours, when most good candidates already have a job, so candidates are going
to need to negotiate time off. Candidates will have holidays planned, for some
certain days of the week will just be impossible due to family constraints, or
sport constraints, or whatever.

------
pyre
It's funny that some of this rings of the DeviantArt hiring process, and they
claim to mean 'serious business.'

