1904Labs

Application

I applied through an employee referral. The process took 7+ months. I interviewed at 1904Labs (Saint Louis, MO) in July 2019.

Interview

The interview process started in Jan, when I had come across a job posting online. My resume clearly stated my current role as a Scrum Master on a government contract project. I did 2 phone screenings, which resulted in the discovery that even though there was a job posting, there was no available position at the time, & that they prefer to "build relationships with people" to make sure there is a good fit. Not uncommon, & that's fine, as that also helps me in the discovery process.

Across 7 months, I had nothing but positive interactions & feedback from every discussion & employee there. However, on my final interview, the Delivery Director that I had been dealing with was no longer employed there. When mentioning their name, there was definitely some awkward reactions from the two other Agile Engineer leads I was interviewing with, which struck me as a bit curious. After speaking to the two Agile Engineer Leads, I then spoke to the new Delivery Director. At the end of the interview, the exact words I was give were, "Based on our conversation, & the notes we have on you, you seem like you would be an absolutely perfect fit here."

At no point through dozens of interactions with 5 different people was there a hint of concern about my experience coming from the government sector of the software development industry. At more than one time was this experience vocalized as a positive, because it provided me with hurdles of constantly having to defend Agile methodologies in ways that most Agile leadership positions will not often face.

About a week & a half after my final interview on a Friday morning, I received contact asking if I was able to block out 30 minutes for a phone call on the following Tues.

Up to this point, every discussion I had with an employee made this company sound like they were very people first, & heavily Agile leaning. I even inquired about different books they had based their human centered software design off of. Great reads, but even some of the people I had interviewed with had not read, or even known about these titles upon me bringing them up in the interviews. In spite, the idea of working in what sounded like a very transparent, people first environment was very exciting.

I set up the phone call, & had obvious anticipation the entire weekend, after a long but positive process. I had to leave work for this call, which only lasted about 4 minutes (not the scheduled 30 minutes), only to be told that they were "looking for someone with more industry experience, & not government experience." A bit shocking as up to this point no one had vocalized concern that the experience was remotely problematic, & in contrast had been expressed seeing it as a positive from 2 separate individuals. This left me with a few frustrations. First, they took the same amount of time to set up a phone call, as it took them to give me the rejection, sandwiching a weekend around contact. Not a very "people first" move. Even the companies in the area that are far from people first have handled me much better than this in both offers & rejections. There was also frustration that my resume clearly stated that I currently work on a government contract project, yet it took a full 7 months to decide that this experience wasn't desirable. A third frustration is that there are individuals that work there that came from the exact same government project I am on, & ONLY had government experience. These frustrations led me to ask the recruiter, who very much seemed like a genuine well-meaning person, if I could possibly have some more feedback from some of the leadership, as none of what had just transpired really made any sense to me.

The next day I received a phone call from the Recruiting Director. My call was more to try to understand if there was additional feedback, outside of the "government experience" reasoning. I told that there was nothing else, & that this reason was just "minute details". They also had no clue I’d been on site a total of 3 times, one of which I met them. Upon hearing this, I did decide to give feedback to them on handling of interview processes, & how the way this was handled was the opposite of "people first", & that if they are truly after getting talent that values people first mentality, this wasn't the way to go about doing it.

As easy as it would be to say I'm disappointed in not being selected, I am far more disappointed in how it took 7 months for them to realize that the "minute details" of my experience that disqualified me for a position were readily available to them before they ever reached out to me to discuss the opportunity in the first place. I’ve discussed these 7 months with at least 6 other industry people, & none of them have ever heard of a company handling an interview process this way.