Collabera

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2+ weeks. I interviewed at Collabera (Dallas, TX) in June 2020.

Interview

Painfully lengthy, pathetic, unprofessional, unethical, and a total time waste.
I received an unsolicited ping on one of the job portals by one of Collabera's recruiters, asking if I wanted to speak about a job opportunity. Well, since I have been looking for a change/new job, I decided to pursue it further especially after checking out the Job description and their client's profile I got tempted & agreed to pursue it further.

Here is my interview journey with Collabera:

1. Multiple phone conversations, emails, chats with this junior recruiter
2. More than few phone conversations with some senior recruiter
3. Finally, couple of phone conversations with the Account head who manages this client's account.

Please Note: All these recruiters are based somewhere in India and they never answer your calls, only they call you back. Looks like they have one way communication systems installed which are cheaper than 2 way comms.

Next up - the Client's interview journey:

1. First overall interview from some guy (looks like he is on the Client side who is making sure the candidate could be presented to the actual Client team)
2. 5 people panel interview for 2 hours - later got divided into 5 individual interviews lasting 1 hour each -so a total of long painful 5 hours spread across 2 days.
3. A final video call.

Apart from couple of the people who interviewed me, rest of them had absolute NO idea what or how to interview for my position. All the interview questions were typical "google" searched interview questions. I felt so silly answering them. And of course, they were not ready to accept my real-life scenarios and answers, they wanted to hear the answers published on the internet based on their Google search results. So pathetic. I knew right then, I was not gonna get this job as one of the interviewer said that I look over qualified for this position and should be applying for a much senior position. He may be right, but I know what my capabilities are and what my strength areas are and where I can deliver my 100%.

Anyways, thats the client's side of the story, I will share more details in my review about them. Since we are talking about Collabera, lets talk about them.

So, after painstakingly interviewing with over 9 people (4 from Collabera + 5 from Client side), and wasting over 15-20 hours on this opportunity with them, the least I was expecting was some feedback/response from Collabera after the interview. And after waiting for almost 1 full week, I followed up with Collabera only to be told that they received the feedback on the next day itself but "FORGOT" to update me. Are you KIDDING ME? You FORGOT to update me with the interview feedback? You made me wait for over a week while you already had the response from the client? I passed of on another opportunity waiting to hear from Collabera since I preferred working for this Client over my other opportunity.

And the Account head gave so silly reasons like his city in India was flooded, he was quarantined when he went to another city, blah blah blah. Really? These are your excuses? Total unprofessional.

I sincerely request people to NOT waste their valuable time on this company.
At the same time, I request the Collabera leadership to look into this and make sure they protect their company's name & reputation from being dragged to ground by such unprofessional people.