I had a really off putting and negative interview experience with Xero. I was initially reached out to by an external recruiter, and after a few conversations with them I got moved to the first round interview with the Xero Hiring Tea, which consisted of the Director and Manager of the team I was interviewing for. The Director led the call and started off by admitting that they were unprepared for the interview, told me that they had interviewed with someone from my team at my current company the day before (which I thought was extremely inappropriate to say!) and then went into a spiel about how they are known to end interviews early and that they will cut the call if they notice any “red flags” or things about me that won’t be a fit. As an interviewee this was really uncomfortable for me… I think it was supposed to make the interview process sound really effective and direct from the Xero side, but as someone who had spent the last 48 hours prepping for the interview it just came off as rude and disrespectful of me and my time. The interview itself went okay for a bit, and then at one point my response to a question got a bit long winded. The main interviewer told me that if I was going to proceed with interviewing with them I needed to “formulate my thoughts better and be more direct because they didn’t want to have to think extra to figure out my points”… which was an insane thing to say to an interview candidate! Everyone gets a little nervous or turned around in interviews so this was just extremely unnecessary to say and was immediately a flag for me that I wouldn’t want to work for this team. The interview was then handed over to the Manager where I was mostly only asked questions about my relationship with my current manager and it felt more like they were trying to pry information on my current job then actually get to know me. I finished the interview and emailed the recruiter that I did not want to proceed anymore with the company after that experience. They did nothing to actually encourage me to want to work for Xero, and I felt like the way they treated me as a person was very disrespectful and inappropriate. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable moving forward with working with Xero as a company after the interaction with these team members and definitely would not and will not encourage anyone else to either.