Aggressive, Arrogant, Stressful and Lies.
5 weeks of agony for a position that never existed.
I was very excited to have an interview at Constant Contact. Constant Contact has a great history and reputation in Boston and I was very excited to see how my experience could add value to the organization.
The position they advertised was not actually available (?) as they were waiting for the budget to be approved. I expressed concern about my availability in 5 weeks and got a strange response of 'don't worry, it will be available'. They didn't seem to realize I was talking about my availability, not theirs. Red Flag. After encouraging me to hang in for 5 weeks and then performing long in-person interviews they decided a few days later that, although I could add value, they 'weren't moving forward with this role'. That is basic incompetence.
The interview process had continual red flags throughout. I have since learned to stop proceeding with these amateur hour interviews.
After the standard recruiter screening call, my next call was with the hiring manager. She called me while driving. She started throwing technical questions at me. They were simple questions but it was hard to give simple answers to someone who is driving and not able to pay full attention. It's also dangerous to to other people of course. red Flag.
The next step was an in-person interview in their offices. The interview process was a long and tiring 3+ hour marathon with 7 different people, most meeting with me as pairs. The first pair included someone who was very aggressive and pushy. He did not want to listen carefully to my answers or open up discussion on interesting topics. Instead he wanted to challenge me, test me, quiz me, argue with me and prove how smart he was. I felt quite uncomfortable by the end of it - Red Flag. To be clear - I love healthy discussion and debate, but only when the basics of being respectful and, to put it simply, being nice, are observed. I am very polite myself and disappointed when it is not reflected in those I meet with. I also felt bad for his pair who looked plain terrified. This pattern was repeated with the next two interviewer pair. One was senior, was was junior. The junior person was very quiet and the senior person drilled me with rapid-fire questions to test me. By the time I had the third interview I was so exhausted by this psychological torture that I couldn't answer simple and basic questions that I have written about extensively. I was faced with several 'arrogant ninja 10x' developers who clearly displayed dysfunctional personalities for working well with other people. Some companies avoid the ninjas, Constant Contact seemed to have rounded them all up into one workplace! I had provided extensive public information about me from github, Stack Overflow, Peer recommendations etc. but it was all ignored and I was asked super basic questions that could have been answered in seconds by looking at my profiles ahead of time. I prepared extensively for the interview, researching each person I met with in the hope of a mature professional conversation. Unfortunately the opposite was true.
In every interview I stressed the desire for me to have the opportunity to ask several questions in the hope of starting a real conversation with fellow professionals that I would work with. Things like programming. Things like writing high quality code. Things like Agile Development and its challenges but we never got there.
Every person I met with seemed stressed. Constant checking of the clock. Constant glancing at the door for the next person. I mentioned not having the opportunity and time to ask many questions and the recruiter acknowledged that 'people are busy with their jobs and only have so much time'. In other words, no time to prep, no time for questions, no time for a real conversation.
From beginning to end I sensed stress and pressure. I wonder if the Endurance buy-out and inevitable charge to 'make the quarterly numbers' is having the usual effect of the money numbers game, quarterly earning, etc. The stock has halved over the past year, another warning sign that pressure to perform is probably growing.
The aggressive interview pattern is not that unusual in the current Boston tech scene and reflects other recent interviews I and others have had. It's ironic that Constant Contact talk about hiring for Collaboration but then interviews using Competition. I expected better from Constant Contact.
In their rejection letter they assured me that if another position opened up they would be sure to contact me. Well the same position opened up a few weeks later in a close by location and I got no call. Perhaps that was one last attempt to stop me exposing them on glassdoor. It didn't work.
