Was contacted by an internal recruiter about a position with a new team they were assembling for a "top secret" project. Recruiter wouldn't give much in the way of details but made it sound enticing enough that I agreed to come in for some on-site interviews. As they needed me to come in during the day, and I needed to sneak out of my current job, they promised to not keep me there more than 3 hours.
When I showed up for the interviews at the scheduled time, their offices were locked and no one was at the front desk (visible through the glass door). Called the recruiter but got his voicemail. After waiting outside for about 10 minutes, some employees returning from lunch let me in and eventually tracked down the receptionist. After about 10 more minutes the recruiter came out to get me. Then there was confusion over which conference room we were supposed to use, and after a bit of scrambling we finally settled into a different room, about 25 minutes after the interviews were supposed to start. The recruiter then proceeded to go into great details about their employee benefits including all the nuances of their bonus plans, as if I already had an offer. I inquired about signing a NDA so I could find out some details about the project and the position, but they claimed to not do that. I was told that I would have to evaluate the opportunity based on what I could infer from everyones vague descriptions.
Eventually I was grilled by the hiring manager, his boss, and several engineers on the team. However, it was a completely disorganized circus. They never stuck to the schedule and kept swapping interviewers around (which was problematic since most of them never properly introduced themselves). In the middle of all the confusion of figuring out who was actually supposed to talk to me next, they ended up leaving me alone and waiting in the conference room for a full 45 minutes. Not surprisingly, I wasn't out of there within 3 hours as promised. In the end the interviews ran for an extra 3 hours, causing me to miss an entire afternoon of work.
The interviews themselves were somewhat odd. Although they asked a number of questions to assess my abilities, they seemed overly interested in a specific former employer. By the time I left, I was wondering if they brought me in to pump me for info on that former employer.
The recruiter had mentioned that they made hiring decisions very quickly and that this would be the only round of interviews. He said that I would hear back from him in 2-3 business days, and he'd have the details of the offer if they were going to extend one. I never heard from the recruiter again. I attempted to follow up a week later with him but my voicemail and email went unanswered. I think that's it's incredibly rude of a company to not close with candidates they've brought in for interviews.
I later discovered that on this very same afternoon they also interviewed a colleague of mine from my former employer that they were so interested in. It turns out that our interviews overlapped and they kept us on opposite ends of building (perhaps explaining the conference room and scheduling confusions). According to my colleague, all of the questions asked were to find out info about that former employer. This person also never heard from the recruiter or company again.
