[ryandrake]

Exactly. Here's an example: I once had a chat over coffee with a hiring manager for a smallish company that seemed interested in me. We talked about my background and accomplishments, went over a few example problems to see how I'd work through them, discussed a little about the company and the project. Everything was going great, and he seemed pretty pleased. At the end was a handshake and "You seem great for the job. I'll put you in touch with HR!" So, what are you thinking? I know what I was thinking!

So HR gets in touch and says "We would like to bring you in for the first set of interviews next week some time, when would work?" I said, "Uhh, there must be a mistake, I already talked with the hiring manager, I thought you were calling to discuss salary, benefits, start date, etc." HR: "Hmm, no, that's not right. Did you even fill out our application online yet?" Conversation was pretty much over from my standpoint at that point. What a crappy experience and a waste of time!

[kafkaesq]

Had a similar-ish experience once -- meeting the hiring manager for coffee, knowing this would be a prelude to a standard onsite interview (which I was fine with).

And it was a very productive discussion. We talked about a lot of some pretty high-level stuff, both technology-wise and business-wise -- possible failure modes in their fraud detection process; customer acquisition strategies moving forward, etc.. Not in a fuzzy, "whatever" way -- but in a serious, analytical way. You know, high-level, adult stuff.

The weird part? When I got the schedule for the interview (btw several more hours in length than the "couple of hours" we had initially talked about -- but we'll let that slide for now), the first thing they wanted be to do was come in at 9 AM for a session on "logic problems" -- you know: pirates, gold coins, poisoned wine bottles -- for a whole hour.

To which I wanted to say, "Wait -- didn't we just have a conversation in that cafe demonstrating exactly the level of critical thinking skills you're looking for (arguably at a much more nuanced level, in fact), and applied actual, real problems -- not silly, made-up puzzle problems?"

But of course I felt too shy to just come out and say that. So made up some excuse about "accepting another offer", instead.

[withdavidli]

Someone needs to train that hiring manager. They gave you no heads up about the process. There might even be a chance the hiring manager didn't know you would have to interview afterwards if the company was small enough. Did you contact the manager afterwards? If the company doesn't have a defined process the manager might have been able to talk to HR to directly give you the offer.