I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at X
Interview
One of the worst experiences I've had in a while. I was lucky and got a referral and was really excited to get an email from recruiting a few days later.
I got a response from a Twitter recruiter asking me a few questions and urging me to respond quickly to get scheduled. I replied the same day and didn't hear back, which I thought was odd. I followed up via email a couple of days later and still no response. I then reached out to the person who referred me. He suggested I give them to the end of that week. I still didn't hear back. I know that tech companies can be weird with hiring, so I was thinking maybe something came up or they filled the role internally or something. The person who referred me then reached out to the hiring manager who said that recruiting hadn't heard from me! Nope. Not true.
I immediately suspected that maybe my email got filtered to spam just because spam happens. I forwarded my response and follow up to him and only then did I get something from the recruiter saying something about her email being directed to spam. Nope, and, even if it had, unlike her, I would have caught it because I check my spam folder every few days.
This was 8-days later. Clearly, there was no workflow in place to follow up with people they'd not heard from. Even if I wasn't interested in the role, I would let them know. I was referred, so I wouldn't want to burn the goodwill and relationship I have with the person who stepped up to recommend me.
Email 101: check your spam folder every few days just in case. If I know this, a recruiter should definitely know this. Had I not had a referral, my email would probably still be collecting virtual dust in her spam folder. That's just awful.
The phone screen eventually got scheduled. I was already anxious because I knew the hiring manager was keen to get people through the pipeline. We couldn't get anything scheduled until that next week. I had a phone screen with another recruiter, which was okay. Even though this is an event-focused role, it looks like I was rejected because I didn't have recruiting experience. However, I actually do have recruiting experience as a hiring manager and said as much in the screen.
I didn't get the courtesy of a rejection. The person who referred me passed on the news, which isn't his job. All in all, I'm not sure how they're going to build this team out into an efficient recruiting machine that can excel at finding and retaining the talent they're going to need when they can't even get a qualified candidate through the pipeline without major errors.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The questions were pretty standard, which also showed me they didn't really know what they wanted or that the recruiter wasn't very good.