I really don't know what to think about Busuu. Anyway, it seems to me that there is a great deal of chaos within the company, compounded by the fact that there are very incompetent people in mid-to-high-level positions. I applied for a Freelance Learning Designer position through Linkedin. A manager ontacted me by email, and we scheduled a video call. It was a very short call, about 20 minutes; she explained the position and mentioned that the next phase would be completing a 90-minute test. We agreed that she would send me the link on a specific day at a specific time. On that day, I was obviously waiting for the link that didn't arrive. After an hour of waiting and feeling nervous, I sent her an email to see if something was wrong, but she didn't reply until very late. She apologized; it seems she had forgotten to note that she had to send me the link. Perhaps that incident is not so serious; I thought it's a human thing to forget something. The next day, she sent me the link. I completed the test, which was not easy; I managed to finish the tasks right in 90 minutes, but I didn't have time to review it. The manager told me they would provide feedback in a week. I waited for 10 days without hearing anything from her, so I wrote to her, and she apologized again. It seems that at that time, they still hadn't made a decision about the person chosen for the position. She asked for another week, which I accepted. After a week, she contacted me, and we scheduled another call to discuss my test and if I wanted to make any changes. In this last video call, she told me she was pleased with my test and that of all the tests, mine was the best, and she wanted to offer me the job. She even asked me if I had any intention of moving out of Europe, and I said no. She said this was perfect because being outside of Europe would complicate the work due to time zone issues.Then she asked me if I had an Upwork account; at that moment, I couldn't recall that I had created an account five years ago but never used it. Finally, she asked me to consider the offer and when I would like to start, making it clear that they needed someone as soon as possible. I sent her an email the next day with the date I could start (in December) and mentioned my Upwork account. She replied that she had sent me a link to initiate the process (a link that never reached me) and that I would have to do some paperwork, but she would get in touch. I replied that my Upwork account is no longer active; Upwork closed it because I never logged in.
Several days later, I received an email saying they had bad news. Due to deleting my Upwork account and immediately opening a new one, Upwork noticed it, and they halted the hiring process. As I explained before, I never deleted my account; I couldn't even log into Upwork because they closed the account. The invitation from Busuu/Chegg never arrived. She apologized but mentioned that now they could only hire people from the U.S. or Latin America (contrary to what she had told me in the last video call about my location...) and that it wasn't my fault, but they had to follow Chegg's guidelines and had to stop the process. However, if there were any changes, she would contact me.
It was undoubtedly a shock for me; I had counted on this position. In fact, I had turned down other offers because this position had been my favorite. Between the first interview and the last email, almost two months passed. Now, I feel like it was time wasted for a catastrophic company. Very sad that the process ended like this.
