17

Anyone else had an interviewer just blatantly waste your time and lie to you?

I was recently interviewing for a job, the first couple of rounds went really well, and they gave out a fairly standard tech test. It was a basic tic-tac-toe game, with a few extra twists and a 120 minute time limit. They then wanted me to host what I had be able to code somewhere so they could test it out before the second technical interview.
The interview interview date came round, the interviewer never actually showed up, but 20 minutes late he sent me an email saying they wouldn't be going ahead because the code wasn't good enough, and cited a bunch of things that were well outside of the brief they gave for the test. and when I checked the access logs for the hosted 'live' version, it showed they hadn't bothered to actually look at it; they hadn't even checked out the code from the repo.
I've had similar things happen in the past occasionally, but is it just my bad luck, or is stuff like this becoming more common recently?

Comments
  • 1
    @norman70688 nah, I'm not going "name and shame" this one. Overall the company seems ot be doing good work.
    But yeah, If my code is bad then that's fair, but at least pretend to have looked at it!
  • 2
    @garrwolfdog if the company "seems to do good work", but they pull this kind of shit to interviewees, are they *really* doing good work?

    Also, have you tried contacting someone higher up in the ranks and informing them of this? Maybe the company is actually good as you say, but you got unlucky with a shitty hr guy. This might be a good test to see what's really the situation inside
  • 4
    @endor I thought about pushing it but decided it wasn't wort the effort in the end. I go through a LOT of interviews every year and sadly this isn't even the worst I've had.
    It might just be bad luck; I assume the interviewer forgot about the meeting and all that was just his way of covering himself.
    I try to think the best of places I get rejections from, this just really stood out as being particularly unprofessional.
  • 1
    @norman70688 Yeah, there's some places i'm happy to name and shame. Place like Sainsburys. Where i've had 5 interviews over the years, which have ranged from "absurd" to "verbally abusive".
    This was just aggravatingly unprofessional on the part of the interviewer themselves. I ended up with a better paying role elsewhere though, so i've got no hard feeling about the company itself.
  • 3
    If it's somewhere that you might want to work again, then best to just leave it.

    If it's not, then just email back & copy in HR:

    "Thank you for your update on the status of my interview, and I'm sorry to hear that the code sample I sent wasn't up to your standards. However, I find it incredibly unprofessional that I was only informed of this 20 minutes after the interview was meant to have started, and rather surprised that you've been able to reach this conclusion given that the access logs show the code was never viewed.

    I wish you all the best, and sincerely hope you are able to offer a more open and honest approach towards future candidates."
  • 2
    @AlmondSauce That's pretty much what I did. That and put the interviewer's name on a list of people to watch out for.
    Even if i'm never going to work there there's no point in causing more of fuss; it's not worth the effort.
Add Comment