Weirdest(worst?) interview experience

Had a weird job interview experience a few days ago, for a pretty senior-ish PM position. This was the first round interview with the team after a basic recruiter round. Hiring manager joins the call on his phone with camera off. Sure no problem. He was presumably on AirPods with terrible sound quality, and his internet connection was terrible too. I could hear 2 out of 5 words. I pointed it out immediately, thinking that he would change his internet connection or something. But it continued throughout the interview. I kept telling him that I can't hear him to either repeat himself or point out that its his internet connection. This ended up breaking the flow of the conversation. He turned on video during the interview, I even told him to switch off his video to improve the quality. Barely improved even then. Still told him that I can't hear him. He even changed his room to see if it helped. Didn’t. He should've been embarrassed by now? He didn’t suggest an alternative — to move to a phone call or reschedule later, wondering whether I should have. I've never faced this before, so didn’t know what was appropriate. Then towards the end, puts on his video again and I see that he is eating something. 💀 I don’t know if this is normal??? If he was so busy, he could've possibly rescheduled instead of wasting both our time. He chose the time. I know it's an employer's market, but how bad is it?

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 *Now things gets mad* Interviewer: Criticized my design system as outdated and implied my work could be done by a beginner watching YouTube.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, I gave an interview at this early startup in Bangalore. It consisted of 5 rounds. - The first four rounds were technical, design, and assignment rounds which went well. I answered all the questions fairly well and the interviewer was happy knowing the answer. - The fifth round was with the CEO - Now this was the turning point. He was more concerned about my personal situation. He asked questions like, where I live, where is my hometown, if WFO is okay for me (I was working remotely in my current company ), and where is your dad ( I said he was no more and that turned off the CEO of a company), how will you keep my mother in BLR, why your mom not living with your siblings?. And I was like "WTF man".the only technical question he asked -> "Have you ever hacked a system in your recent days?". 😂😂 After wasting more than 14 hours in the process I received a rejection mail without any feedback. Message to recruiter - if you are more concerned about the personal situation of the candidate, please conduct a preliminary round for that.

Recently I have been interviewed by a company and cleared the first round. Then I had 2nd round of the interview conducted through intervue.io which is a outsourced platform. The interviewer was least bothered to know what I am doing in my current role and how I can contribute to org but only conducted interviews by posting code snippet to solve. Do you think it is right way to conduct interviews? Please share your experience

There I said it. It sucks. The start is a joke - cause here's the plan - If you spend too much time on intros, and you wasting the so called "interview" time. And then you think I should save it for later, lets focus on the interview. so we move to the stinky middle - the interview part - a web of questions with the obvious non relevant ones in there - and for a fact you will still give a green light to folks by a measure of retention of knowledge, not by knowledge application - cause you give hints to solve the problem sparingly. Here's the fact about your measure of potential - Take away Google and ChatGPT from these managers, and more than half your team would crumble. Wouldn't they use it on everyday job? If yes, then why are you depriving them of it in the interview. You will ego battle them - Not answering most of their questions - cause you are not interviewing - you are an interviewer - and they are the interviewee.. or you will conveniently park the questions for later, until a hiring decision is formally made - so you save your time - I mean cmon! thats your game plan. And the closing: it’s usually a weak handshake or a sign off and a 'We’ll be in touch' OR 'HR will get back to you' CLASSIC. And yet.. you expect the job seekers to buy into their 'mission and vision' and become dedicated team member to "your" team. Seriously? CONVERSATION has a CON in it and you are doing it. + you cant hold it, even if your life depended on it. The only reason the job seeker turned up, and thanked you for your time after the interview - is cause they need a job and were polite. NOTHING ELSE. In a rare case - you really did a good job, and hence the "thank you" Podcast here - https://lnkd.in/gMe6v9hV

I attended one interview today. The interview went only for 11mins and as a courtesy the interviewer should introduce himself before he starts interviewing I found a big gap here. I decided not to continue with the interview further due to below reasons; 1. The interview was a one way video call where I was feeling awkward as I was not able to see other person's face and was talking in the air. 2. I was asked why did I apply for this role which is a Senior role and I have no experience in handling a managerial role of team handling? 2. I found the way I bombarded with the questions from the starting was very unprofessional and somewhere I felt embarrassed. 3. I was asked by the interviewer to check with the HR/Recruiter why he/she has shortlisted me ? My answer for the 2nd question was as follows; I am having 9yrs of experience and I found the responsibilities mentioned in JD are suitable and I have the skills of handling the role confidently, I do not see anywhere in Required skills it is mentioned that the candidate has a mandatory team handling experience required to apply for this role. Candidates can apply for any role he/she finds suitable and no one can stop them applying. I have applied for this role as I found it suitable but if this was not suitable for me why did my resume get shortlisted and called for a VC interview and wasted my time

I recently interviewed at a startup for a Backend role. I cleared the initial take-home assignment round and subsequent DSA round and their HR told me the third round would be a Design round. I prepared accordingly. At the time of the interview, no one showed up. I had to wait for 15 minutes for someone to show up. Instead of asking me a Design question, the latecomer asked me another DSA question. I asked him why is he doing that as it was clearly communicated to be a Design round. The interviewer said Design would be asked in the next round if I clear this one. Weird! He only gave me 10 minutes to come up with the solution. After that he spilled the answer, and cut the call abruptly. I get a rejection email the next day. Now why am I writing this post? Because I just saw the CTO of thar company rant on Linkedin about how his candidates declined their offer letters at the last minute. The moral of the story is that if you misbehave with your candidates, they will misbehave with you. So be prepared to take the L.

I recently got an offer from a seed stage startup for a SDE2 role. They shared the offer in a 2 liner mail. Weirdly enough they have a probation period of 3 months which could also be extended to 6 months during which there'll be no paid leaves, nothing, and you cannot be late to the office any day. I asked them to share the detailed offer letter with all these verbal probation clauses penned down and they've not replied for a week. After getting the offer, they asked me to submit my adhar card, pan card, 10th, 12th marksheet, graduation certificate, passport, birth certificate, payslips, previous offer letter, resignation mail, proof of bonuses and all sorts of documents. It's funny how they think trust only works one way. I've withdrawn the application as there were too many red flags during the entire process. I really wish the Indian corporate system had an open culture where trust is bidirectional and not act like we're at the mercy of their job.

What's this obsession of startups ghosting after taking assignments from you. It's so irritating and they just can't value your time and efforts

I'll go first. I got a call for an APM role from one of the companies which did sound pretty sketchy and the recruiter was started bullying me into answering questions, when I asked to know more about the role. The recruiter was extremely unprofessional, and obviously the conversation was nowhere great. They however, did go ahead and sent me the JD and other links, etc to fill in and apply for the job. Mind you, I hadn't applied for the job. 🥲 It just was a pretty sour conversation which had left me in an uncertain situation. Any similar experiences?