Bad Interview Experience. Was I at fault here?

3 points by QuasarLogic 8 years ago | 5 comments

I had an interview recently with a YC company which left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I'm not going to name names here but here's what went down.

After a couple missed appointments from the CEO and multiple reminders from me, I finally managed to get on a call with them. I sometimes have spotty reception in my house so the call got disconnected the first time. I called back, explained the network issues, but they hung up in middle of the conversation. I called back but I wasn't able to reach them. So, I sent a text and waited for a callback. They did call back again, hung up while I was speaking. I called back again to no avail. I felt pretty bad at this rudeness. I gave up and sent an email to say that they could email me if they wanted to continue while apologizing for spotty reception. I tweeted at their twitter account and complained about the rude interview.

I got an email from CTO a few days later, which resulted in a couple more rounds of seamless and painless interviewing. The CEO emails me after and let me know that they wanted to fly me into their office at very short notice(3-4 days), and booked tickets after my approval. I get a phone call the next day from their employee, who noticed the tweet I'd made earlier and asked to take it down. I took it down as requestedand asked them who I could talk to to know more about the upcoming interciew. I was asked to call the CEO, who picked up and let me know they'd call me back. I got an email a couple hours later that said: "We had some internal discussion about you and decided you aren't a good cultural fit, and therefore, won't be moving forward with the process. We will be canceling the flight tickets as well." I posted here because I'd like to know if I was in the red here for tweeting at them about the rude interview experience. So, what could I have done better here and how can I avoid such situations in the future?

folknor 8 years ago |

There's not enough details here to give a fair analysis, or useful response, I think.

Seems to me that you assume a few things; (1) that the CEO is not insanely busy, (2) that they hung up on you a few times, when it could be any number of technical issues, (3) that they are not human, and able to maintain optimism and momentum through multiple disconnects without giving up.

Also seems to me that you wrote that tweet out of frustration, while if you had waited a day and let yourself cool down, you probably would have worded it differently, or not written it at all.

Of course, I have no idea what the tweet said, so this is just pure speculation.

As for what you could do differently, I'd say: be somewhere with better reception while doing phone interviews, and if the other party misses lots of appointments, assume that they're (a) new to their job/role, and/or (b) very busy - but they've still indicated that they want to talk to you, so actively remember that each time you feel let down.

QuasarLogic 8 years ago | |

I don't have screenshots of the tweet but it said: "Just had the rudest interview with @company. No. 1 rule in tech: Don't be a dick"

FroshKiller 8 years ago |

It sounds to me like you're leaving out some context. That said, you should've known better than to tweet about your interview process.

Also, if you know you have bad reception at home, why on Earth would you take a scheduled call there? Go somewhere with better reception in advance. Sit in your car and take the call if you have to.

QuasarLogic 8 years ago | |

There's nothing left here that's between the lines. I made . the description concise cause there's a 2000 character limit. The network issues happen quite rarely and honestly, are not even a thing most of the time.

troydavis 8 years ago |

An angry public tweet would be enough reason for most companies to stop hard - even if they had already interviewed you and you’d passed with flying colors.