I was approached by a Workday recruiter via email. We set up a time to talk via Zoom.
The recruiter screen went well enough and she said a technical interview with a hiring manager would be set up. I went a week with no reply, and emailed her back asking what the status was. She said there was some mix-up and that I would receive an invite shortly. Fine, stuff happens.
I received the invite for the second Zoom interview and it was a no-show on their end. I told the recruiter what happened and when a reschedule could happen.
It was set up for a couple of days later. The hiring manager and I had a good back-and-forth and I think I was a good fit for the opening based on our conversation. After a few days, I hadn't received any follow-up so I sent an email to the recruiter again. She set up another Zoom interview to go over next steps and results.
This is where it got really weird...
- on the final Zoom call, she said that they would not be moving forward with me because I had too much automation experience.
- I told her that most of my experience is on the functional side and very little of my experience is automation-related.
- then she asked me for my email address because she had mixed my profile up with someone else's apparently (?).
- I told her my email address, and then she started to re-interview me. She said that I didn't have enough experience working in a team-related environment.
- I told her that all of my past experience has been team-based and collaborative.
- Then she asked me how much experience I had.
- I told her how much and then she said that wasn't enough (even though she had just claimed that I had too much automation experience). All of the above is information that she should have and did know beforehand.
- I asked for further clarification on this (because why would I even get to speak to a hiring manager if I didn't meet the role's requirements?), and her reply was "you see, this is why I don't like to give feedback: it gets contentious and makes me uncomfortable." Then she asked me if I had any questions, but I said no because it would be like talking to a wall and that was the end of it.
What...? My guess is that she was too embarrassed by initially not knowing who I was (even though she was the one who set up the Zoom call) and didn't want to double-back on her initial decline when she though I was someone else. This is looney tunes... couldn't make this stuff up.
I was really looking forward to this role but I guess the recruiter ended up doing the exact opposite of their job: turn away good talent by giving a bad experience.
P.S. the hiring manager definitely left a good impression on me and wasn't part of the confusion I experienced.
