For people who interview potential candidates for high level positions what was the worst interview you conducted?

I recently applied to Indian Fintech, first round went well. Got no response from HR for 3-4 days. Once I called her on 5th day, she told me that I had cleared first round and they will assignment next day. Assignment didn’t arrive for 2 more days. HR stopped picking my calls. After this I reached out to third party recruiter (who started the process initially). She contacted this company HR and they sent me assignment next day. I had to complete it in 48 hour strict timeline. Spent entire 2 days on it and barely slept. I submitted it on time. After this no reply from HR for 4 days. Finally I reached out to my interviewer from first round for help. He said he will remind HR. Next day I got call from HR that all open positions are closed and we will consider u in future. No feedback on assignment was given. Not even sorry for making u wait. Isn’t the only thing HRs need to be good at is people handling & professional communication?

#rant Damm yesterday i met the most dumb@&& idi&₹t interviewer ever. I was interviewing with him for principal engineer role. Oh dude his ego was out of the roof, Asking a question and then saying ok leave it aside jumping to next question. Asking bookish subjective questions. Dude that guy can demotivate and kill a newbie not sure how he might be treating his peers in his organization.

I had an interview today with a service-based company. The first round was conducted by someone who used to be a content writer but is now a community lead with no design background. During the interview: Interviewer: Asked me to showcase my proudest work. Me: Presented a detailed walkthrough of a feature, explaining every design decision and inviting questions throughout. Interviewer: Expressed high praise for my work and asked about my design system. Me: Explained my design system approach, including the collaboration and cross-team communication it required. Interviewer: Continued to be impressed. Me: Thanked them. Interviewer: Inquired about my salary expectations. Me: Stated my expectation. *Now things gets mad* Interviewer: Criticized my design system as outdated and implied my work could be done by a beginner watching YouTube. Asked me to prove my worth was really upto the salary expectations. Me: Pointed out that I had already justified my value through my work during the past 50 minutes. It's disheartening that the interviewer discredited my soft skills and the experience I gained from two years of designing. They seemed to dismiss my achievements due to a lack of "full-time experience." It would have been more appropriate if they had asked follow-up questions about my portfolio. This experience felt like a waste of time, as the interviewer appeared immature and conducted the interview poorly, despite having over 8 years of experience. It's a disappointing and unprofessional approach to an interview.

Recently gave a PM interview with a b2c saas company. I was asked to do a take home assignment. The interviewer has no intention of conducting the interview. He was late and he looked like he just woke up from sleep. The questions were all over the place. And he didn’t even spent 5 minutes going through the case study I prepared. I don’t know why people take interviews when they are not interested in it. Such a waste of time!!!!

Today, I had an interview for a job as a software developer. The person interviewing me started by asking if I could speak Hindi. I told him I could understand it but wasn't good at talking because I'm from South India. He gave me a mean smile, which made me feel really unsure of myself right away. 😔 We went on with the interview. He asked a question that was kind of a design question, and when I tried to answer, he didn't really listen. Even when I asked him some questions, he didn't give a good answer. He was busy with his phone, and it seemed like he wanted to say no to me. I'm feeling pretty down about it. 😞 I don't get why he acted like that, but now I feel dumb after doing the interview.

Candidate experience is the first point of contact that shows the culture of the company. From recruiters ghosting to giving interview assessments that is actual work for the next quarter to getting too personal about your life, what has been your worst candidate experience?

Recently had a chance to interview at a pretty mature startup(moengage), a recruiter called me up, we set up a time and date for a machine coding round. I was pretty excited to be honest and looking forward to the interview. Fast forward to the day of reckoning , I join the interview with my intellij set up, my pen and paper to draw the ERD ready and my mind full of design patterns, only to be confronted with two DS & Algo questions(i legit gave up the moment i heard ds), the questions were interesting and the interviewer chill but it blindsided me by a whole lot and I couldn’t solve anything. It’s pretty weird that startups with so many resources at their disposal could be so out of sync internally.

they rejected after giving all answers and took more than 3 days to reject and interviewer was not able to understand deep concept which i was explaining

Sharing my worst interview experience with Accenture...last week HR scheduled an interview but panel did not join. They called me day after and rescheduled interview. Again this time...same happened...I waited for 25 mins and left the meeting as panel did not join. Trying to contact HR but no response. All the efforts and time candidate put into interview are of no value to them😑.

Recently, I had a mind-boggling encounter during a senior finance role interview at a prominent startup. After impressing the Finance Director and Controller, I expected an interview with CFO as a logical next step. Instead, I found myself facing an Independent Director—a puzzling addition to the process, especially with a CFO in place. What baffled me more was the interview's focus. Despite the role's clear scope within India, the Independent Director bombarded me with international tax inquiries, completely unrelated to the position or the company's operations. It felt like a ploy to glean free consultancy for personal matters. This experience left me questioning the rationale behind hiring protocols. Why subject candidates to irrelevant interrogations by individuals detached from the role's purview? It's disheartening to witness such a flawed process at the hands of those meant to guide a company's growth.