I was initially contacted by the recruiter to set up a phone interview with the hiring manager. I was told that they were looking to hire for this role as soon as possible because they had been looking for quite a while.
A couple of days later I had a great phone conversation with the hiring manager. She seemed very impressed with my background and experience, she even asked: "where have you been, I've been looking for you!". She was eager to get me into the office and interview with the team. I made my self available and two days later I came into the office and met with several people including a video interview with a satellite office.
In all, I was on site for seven hours, spending the last four with the hiring manager. We had a very in-depth conversation and I was pretty stoked on how it all went. At the end of our conversation, she looked me in the eye and said: "We want to hire you, I think you'd be very happy with the compensation, you should hear back from us in a couple of days".
A couple of days came and went and I chalked it up to her being super busy. After a week had gone by I reached out to the recruiter and did a check-in. She got back to me fairly quickly, letting me know that she should have an update for me by midday the following day. That day came and went, I gave it another week and emailed her again. I was told then that the team was interviewing another candidate. I was completely dumbfounded to say the least.
After another few days, the hiring manager called me to inform me that they had decided to go with another candidate . She went on to say, with the same enthusiasm as our initial phone interview, "but we loved your experience and skill set", talk about adding insult to injury.
Heres my thought:
Don't get me wrong, I think its completely fair for any company to do their due-diligence and vet as many candidates as they feel necessary to ensure they have the right person and they are a good fit for the team. Considering the stellar phone interview and the seven-hours in-person interview and the fact that I was told they wanted to hire me, I felt this to be extremely unprofessional and quite frankly disrespectful of my time and the efforts I put into the process. You just simply don't do that to someone. NOT COOL!! I think its fair to let candidates know that they like you and you are in our top pool but we are interviewing other candidates and should have an answer for you in a couple of weeks. Instead, I was made to feel that I got the job and that they were eager for me to start right away.
