Following this experience, I am highly unlikely to ever apply for a role here again. While I understand that these reviews can often come from people unhappy with the outcome, I would've been fully fine with the outcome, had the following things been different:
- No personal touch: No additional courtesy communication from the recruitment team, apart from box ticking. I almost got ghosted at the screening stage simply because my work schedule only allowed me to put Wednesday in as the appropriate day (with a generous amount of time slots). It was only after I had put additional days (on my own initiative), which did require a lot of balancing, that I heard back from the recruiter about the first stage itself.
- Lack of process clarity: I never knew which round would be final, who else was going to assess me, nor how long will the breaks in between would be. In fact, I received conflicting information, and then experienced a completely different process to any of those. Between my last two interviews there was radio silence for almost two weeks, despite me following up.
- Lack of clarity on requirements: While I was pretty clear on the requirements of the position I applied for, there was no information given whatsoever about the levels of technical requirements needed for the role. It was only at the end that I learned that a more technical candidate was offered the position, despite me seemingly being the perfect fit and the fact that one of the interviewers mentioned that most of his team learned the technical aspects on the job. To learn that and then be dismissed for a more technical candidate, despite my experience and knowledge, was very disappointing.
- Types of interviews: All my interviews were the same. It felt like the interviewers did not learn a single thing about me from each other, and I felt like I had to present the same things about my background over and over again, and if you circle back to the reasoning behind opting for another candidate, this really shines through, cause nowhere in my interview process had I mentioned the lack of technical skills. In fact, I mentioned my advanced knowledge of Excel, my basic SQL knowledge, proficiency in data extraction and analysis, as well as advanced knowledge of software I used in a similar role.
- Rejection email: I cannot stress this enough. I believe in cultivating relationships within the industry. To receive a one-sentence feedback after the final stage underpinned the lack of personal touch throughout the process. It felt very disrespectful of the time I invested, and especially with the recruitment team's knowledge of my current setup and the reason why I was looking to move on. Further to that point, the only time I actually received a modicum of courtesy was when I went out of my way to move the interview from the following week to the current, after the team had decided not to wait for the more senior team member, only to still schedule an interview with them as well two weeks later.