A recruiter reached out to me via LinkedIn and even though I wasn't looking for a change, I was really impressed with the product, the CEO and also the great reviews. Little did I know that this would turn out to be one of the worst experiences of my life.
At every step, the recruiter spoke as if the job was already mine and the interview steps were a mere formality. Only after speaking to another senior recruiter did I realize that the first recruiter was not depicting an accurate picture. Nonetheless, the initial recruiter was my main point of contact throughout the process. I was given a take home online assessment (finding bugs and fixing them), two phone screens (very basic testing and coding problems) and went onsite to their HQ at San Jose, CA on a Friday (almost a month from when the recruiter had first reached out to me). Met with a bunch of people including the hiring manager, and overall I was decently satisfied with my performance.
A few hours after the interview, a third recruiter reached out to me via text, asking me if this mode of correspondence was okay and said things were looking pretty good. I flew out feeling quite good about the entire experience so far. The next week, I reached out on Monday for feedback and was told to wait a day or two. On Wednesday, the first recruiter reached out to me over phone and said everything was good, I had gotten the job! He wanted to discuss numbers and we had some discussions over phone and text (my naiveté still not apparent to me). On Thursday, we finalized everything and he said he would have an official update for me by early next week.
Early next week, he responded saying the hiring manager was out of town (most probably a lie) and he would have news by end of the week or the next week. Things were starting to look fishy but I was optimistic since Cohesity had such great reviews and I didn't expect a recruiter to string me along for his own benefit.
On Friday, I got a text message saying things weren't looking so good with a sad emoji from said recruiter. He called after a while saying they had found another candidate with more experience and skills for the role. Which in itself is absolutely fine, but calling a candidate saying the job is his, discussing salary, possibly lying about the hiring manager being out of town etc is not okay! Had they simply said that they were interviewing other candidates and would let me know in a few weeks, this entire bitter ordeal could have been prevented.
Anybody who interviews with them should absolutely not communicate informally with recruiters, because from my experience here, they are not transparent or honest with you and will lead you on falsely.
I'm sure Cohesity is a great company and will continue to grow at a tremendous pace, but this experience has left me with a terrible impression of the company, its people, its ethics and I will probably not consider this company in the future because of a single recruiter who had no integrity and decided to treat a candidate without any respect.
