Long post warning - this is just a perspective about shitty HR in the vein of this post, not sexism, like the original Fowler post.

Late last year at 10am on a Thursday, I got a call asking if I wanted to interview for a HR position with Uber in Australia. He wanted the position filled ASAP, so we organised an interview for that evening.

I had already accepted an offer from another company for a summer internship in software dev, an area I was actually interested in, but I was beguiled by the Uber brand and was practically willing to give up a lot to work for them as a result. I am not interested in HR by any stretch, and believe that HR staff are better put to use removing staples from about-to-be-recycled paper or other more productive ends.

I 'passed' the initial interview and was asked to do the following:

- Draft a cold email to a potential hire, with the goal to fill an existing vacancy in the company;

- Pass an extensive, three-hour 'data analytics' test (see: basic-intermediate data manipulation and analysis in Excel) hosted on HackerRank. This was actually fairly challenging because you're purposefully time-poor throughout the test;

- Create a PowerPoint presentation outlining a plan to target university grads. This was also challenging since if I was given a template with pre-made slide designs, it would be pretty easy. But I designed a slide deck from scratch completely in line with the Uber design guidelines, including typeface, color and other design requirements, on top of my recruitment strategy;

- Trawl through their current Uber Careers website and list as many possible ways that it could be improved.

So I was given this Thursday night. He wanted the tasks done asap, but I told the recruiter that I had an assignment due Tuesday, and that it would be quite a crunch. He 'relented' and gave me until Sunday night. As I write this, I realise that he was unabashedly using my enchantment with the company to his favour.

I did nothing that entire weekend but work on those items, and handed them all in Sunday evening, right on time, to the detriment of my assignment. I found out later (through a contact in the company, not from the recruiter) that I scored over 80% in the online exam, and that all the other items were very well received.

Despite this, I never received anything back from the recruiter at all. Nothing except a boilerplate rejection email, featuring photo of Diversity Hire #1 and #2 laughing over coffee and 'Thank you for your application. However, we cannot proceed with your application at this time...' The recruiter insisted that they tried to call me (again, I heard this through the contact) but lo and behold, despite being glued to my phone for over a week, my phone didn't ring once. The incredible disrespect I felt from this experience will mean that I'll never apply to them for any role, ever.

Tl;dr - my perspective of Uber is that they are entitled to your best work, and have no intention to reciprocate.

user:	wallabie
created:	October 11, 2016
karma:	124