I was cold messaged me on LinkedIn. I wasn’t looking, but when I saw the job description, I became interested and proceeded to apply.
The following week, we had a call. It was a nice and warm call, they were late with no prior notice and was also unresponsive days earlier. Tiny red flags I chose to ignore.
They then asked for my resume which I obliged shortly after the call. 2 days later, they sent me a take home coding project to be submitted in 7 days, including the weekends.
We both know that my skills are not currently completely aligned with what they’re looking for, hence they needed extra effort from me to build it with a tech stack I’m not up to speed with. I agreed because I wanted to use this tech stack and I wanted the job.
It was a demonstrative backend API project, with an agreement so broad it essentially lets them do whatever they want with my work. Additionally, I was also tasked to deploy it and send them the link to the deployed project, with CI/CD, test coverage, and a public git repository. It was a lot of work. I’m not gonna go into detail about how much effort I put into it because it doesn’t entitle me to an offer, but it does entitle me to at least a response. And more especially because they approached me first. In the end, they ghosted me. No generic feedback, no acknowledgement they received my submission, not even an automated rejection, nothing. From the data I have, they likely reviewed it. I followed up a week later and they appear to have deliberately ignored it.
Now I’m not new to rejection, I’ve been here long enough. I’m used to tech interview processes. But to be completely ghosted after asking me to put hours for them, is completely unacceptable and dehumanizing, and was a first for me. I didn’t research the interview process before I did the take home project, but now I wish I did.
It looks like it’s a common behavior from them and not just from my experience, as per the other reviews. Now it feels like an unpaid work.
I would only advise applying if you really need a job, otherwise don’t bother. If you do apply, lower your expectations and prepare for a potential less than professional experience.
P.S: The JD I got was not in public job postings in LinkedIn and their website, but I received email communication from the company domain so it’s verified. This puts some things into perspective.
