| My main takeaway from this article is that the author wasn't necessarily frustrated with spending 12 hours to prepare a 1-hour long presentation - though this does seem like a big ask - but was more frustrated that they didn't even get the opportunity to present it because the company was > looking for someone with a few years of experience working with a specific technology I had never used. But… they knew that from my resume. And from my first interview. And from my second interview. And when they told me that I needed to prep a talk. Shouldn't the company have seen this deal breaker before the interview process started? Or at least after the first interview or two? Acknowledging that the author wasn't the right fit would have saved both the company and the candidate the time and effort of going through an interview process that the company should have known wouldn't yield an offer. I'm not sure if this is common practice, but I've encountered something similar, going through multiple rounds of interviews over many hours only to have the recruiter tell me that "based on your resume, you don't have the skills we're looking for in a candidate for this position". Why waster my time, and yours, going through the interview process then? I don't think any of these rationales are very satisfying, but here are some possibilities:
1) The company didn't know what it was looking for when it started the process and came to a different understanding of the job requirements as the candidate moved deeper in the process.
2) The company is covering up the real reason they didn't want to move forward and "lack of relevant skill" is an easy excuse.
3) The company's recruiting process is immature/messy/sloppy/ineffective and they literally missed the lack of required skills until the very end.
4) The position had to be filled and the company wanted to maintain a backup candidate in case their first choice didn't work out. I'd love to hear from those with experience on the recruiting/hiring manager side to see whether any of these reasons ring true or if something else might be at play. |
It's a complicated situation from both side. If you're the company, you have to anticipate that the other candidate might get another offer, or turn you down, or turn out to be a flop, so you want to interview other candidates at the same time to have a back-up plan. And that's a good thing for the article author too, because it gives them the chance to see if they're a fit for the job and could learn the required skills even if they don't have them now. And it's great if it works out... but shitty when it doesn't.
It's worth realizing that it's a losing situation for the company, too. It's not like they want to waste a bunch of time interviewing you for a job you're ultimately not going to be in any more than you want to waste time on it. But unfortunately "wasting a bunch of time interviewing" is just how job hunting/hiring works these days.