I applied to a Data Scientist position at the Bangalore office that required 2+ years of experience after Master’s degree with the help of a referral. I was invited to a 60 mins Round 1 interview. For the first 40 minutes, I was asked basic questions on ML that every Data Scientist should know, and some questions on SQL, MLOPs, Cloud Deployment, a project that I have worked with and its Model Evaluation parameters. In the last 20 mins, I was asked to do simple coding in Python regarding some pre-processing steps before applying a standard ML model on a given dataset. The interviewer seemed to have a set of questions that he wanted to ask, but he was friendly and he gave me good feedback during the interview. The interview went really well and I was confident that it would move to the next step. However, after a week of the interview, I received an email from the HR that although my credentials were good, it does not match “the expectations of the role at this time“. It was unexpected, but it reinforces my belief of the poor hiring management of the company. If the company is unable to offer its candidates to move to the next round even after a good Round 1 interview, it simply reflects its poor decision making abilities and the company is simply wasting candidates’ precious time and resources in the process.