iConduct
I applied for a Project Manager position at iConduct. The first 5 stages went very quickly, and I felt a positive momentum to move forward. At the end of these stages, HR requested references. I provided them immediately (providing 3, as one of my original two was from the US and they asked me to replace them). The recruiter did speak with them and received excellent feedback.
This is where the absurdity began:
5-Week Ghosting: For a whole month (!), nobody got back to me. Every time I initiated contact to follow up, I received half-baked answers like "we are still checking."
Total Disconnect Between HR and the Co-Founder/CEO: After a month, I was invited to a "tie-breaker" interview with the CEO. To my astonishment, the CEO showed up completely unprepared and without any briefing. She knew absolutely nothing about me, didn't know they had already spoken to my references, and at the end of the conversation even asked me: "Can we speak to your references?" Five weeks after they had already done so!
Immediate Rejection After Follow-Up: The moment I sent a follow-up email politely highlighting this lack of internal synchronization and asking for an update, I received a phone call within less than an hour stating they "decided to move forward with someone else."
Tech companies must understand that candidates are human beings, not just numbers in a system. Dragging someone along for five weeks after the reference stage, bringing them to a CEO who knows nothing about them, and dumping them the second they ask for clarifications is unprofessional, disrespectful, and completely lacks basic human decency.
You have been warned.
