[logfromblammo]

You forgot the part about rejecting all current U.S. nationals as unable to work the position. This is often by requiring X+Y years of experience with an X year old buzzword, and then telling your recruiter exactly how to lie on the resume. But it may also be by giving people actual interviews and then either offering them a wage lower than what is intended for the H1B import, or rejecting them for unspecified reasons.

Whenever I get dicked around in the interviews by a potential employer, I start to suspect ulterior motives. One time, for my own amusement, I asked to see their H1B public records. The company immediately got very defensive, and got their lawyer involved just long enough to hastily research what I was talking about, assemble the records, and set up all the flaming hoops I would have to jump through in order to see them. It was almost like they were hiding something. I didn't actually want to see the records, I just wanted to see that they were willing to show them (or that they didn't have records because they didn't have any H1B employees).

It was a lot like asking a toddler who ate the last cookie in the jar, and watching them hide their hands from you as they say, "Maybe it was the invisible ghost ninjas." I don't need that level of immaturity in an employer.

[lawnchair_larry]

They responded that way because that's such an absurdly strange thing for the candidate to ask, not because they were hiding anything or had ulterior motives.

I suspect there are other reasons why you're being rejected. This seems like paranoid thinking. Most companies won't provide a rejection reason as a matter of policy.

[logfromblammo]

...which promotes paranoid thinking.

I only asked after it was already clear I was no longer being considered, and I (politely) asked for some feedback on the interview. They wouldn't say one thing about it, good or bad--wall of silence. So, as is common with whiteboard interviews, I threw out something unexpected to see how they would react. The fact that they reacted so poorly made me feel better about their rejection. It's not me; it's them. I didn't just fail to impress. Instead, I unknowingly avoided a future disaster.

I naturally proceed under the assumption that there is nothing actually wrong with me, as a person or as a candidate for employment. From my perspective, I am a normal person, and a competent software professional. I can be pleasant and sociable. I have been on enough interviews to get a sense of what is "normal" and what is strange--even strange for a tech interview. Usually, that determination only happens after the fact, or very late in the process, but I can still eventually tell when something was out of place.

So when I haven't done anything that would make it clear to me that I have blown the interview, and the company won't give me a reason for rejection, or even suggest one thing that I could improve upon, I naturally take that to mean that there is something wrong with the company. At the least, they are simply too rude to give a candidate any kind of (possibly helpful to them) feedback afterward. But they could also be concealing an unethical hiring practice behind a wall of corporate policy and plausible deniability. There's no way for me to know, and I don't really care by the time I get to that point. There are way too many other companies out there willing to go out on a first date to sit and stew over the ones that won't return your phone calls.

I can't even remember the name of the company now. Which is unfortunate, because I'd have to search through old e-mails to avoid accidentally applying to them again.

[linkregister]

Their H1B records would be posted here: http://h1bdata.info

[logfromblammo]

I know that. I even knew it at the time (though it might have been a different site). They might even have known it. I wanted to see how they would react to my reasonable--albeit unexpected--request for records that are supposed to be viewable by any person who walks in off the street.

At the time, I was toying with the idea of using a company's public H1B records as a way to give me an advantage in salary negotiations. After seeing the reaction of this one company, I decided not to do that.