Emailed with an inquiry about software engineer interns and if they hire them. They don't actively seek out interns, but are open to them. I was quick to receive an interview with someone likely from HR. I was asked questions like "why Clockwork?" -- the usual. I was then asked to "play a game" where I was given random acronyms or terms from the industry like PHP, XML, Linux, etc. and asked what they mean. The interview with HR went perfectly fine until I told her that I could not intern in the summer. She was really taken back, which surprised me. Twice before the interview I told them I could only work during the school year because I have an internship for the summer already. She said it would not necessarily be an issue, though, but definitely could be. She asked for writing samples of mine, so I sent her my blog and I was told I'd hear back early next week.
Three weeks past, I assume they were not interested and emailed them to confirm so. No response. Another week goes by, I emailed someone else from the company and they said that my interviewer quit, and my application fell through the cracks. That raised red flags for me. They offered to set me up with an onsite technical interview. I was asked questions from the full-time developer questionnaire, so being that I was initially thrown off by a couple terms/questions did not bother me whatsoever, and we actually discussed what I didn't understand at first and I then understood it fine. Sometimes you completely get a concept but don't know there's a popular term for it. The interview was smooth and I felt very good about it. I was then asked to send code samples and that I would not hear back next week but the week after at the earliest.
After an entire month (this is after the first month of waiting, so we're at over two months now), I felt bad that my current employer was waiting to hear about whether or not I would leave for Clockwork (as you can see, I already had it pretty good with an employer that treated me well for my transparency and honesty). I also felt that Clockwork was being incredibly unprofessional about the entire process. I put a lot of time into this, was willing to take a lower pay for experience on a different team before I finished college, and taking a leap of faith into a company with a very low amount of employee reviews. I am very happy staying at my job as it's a great experience, so I didn't really lose anything here but a lot of my time, but I did gain a really good perspective of this company without even having worked there. I suppose that was much of the reason of wanting to work there as an intern.
I did email them and kindly withdrew my application. I got a short "Ok thanks for following up . . ." and no explanation or apology. Regardless if I was an interest to them or not, how I was treated was not okay. Given my past internship offers for the same title, I would say I very well qualified for the position, so I actually curious of whether or not I actually was from their perspective. I'm sure they know who wrote this, and I hate to risk burning bridges, but businesses and people who work for them should also be held accountable for how they treat their prospective employees. I believe the most ironic part about this process is that one of the first questions I was asked by HR was along the lines of "describe what you did not like about your least favorite supervisor" and I answered with something similar to "I've had unprofessional supervisors who are hard to communicate with and very often forget when to follow up with important things for me."