What an incredible waste of time.
I spent days preparing for a serious interview (that meant company history, products and services descriptions and uses, current news, the graduate program in detail) and ended up being interviewed by a HR intern who asked some pre-set questions and typed your response, no follow up on any question or even any sort of interest in what you were saying.
But let's start from the begining. Submitted my CV and pretty quickly got notified back that I was of interest and they wanted to set up a "telephone interview". We agreed on the day and time. The day before the interview I had some problems with my sim card not working (I was abroad) so I emailed them with an alternative (still UK) phone number for them to reach me in. The following morning, a couple of hours before my interview, I was notified that the "Phone interview" would be via Zoom audio. I thought it was really careless of them to not make any mention that that would be the case on the email exchange I had had. What if I was somewhere with no internet connection (which I could sincerily be, since a "phone interview" does not usually require such?) Plus, to use Zoom you need to make an account at the very least, download an app possibly even, so what if I did not have any of that set up? Thankfully, because of me reaching out to them, I had a couple of hours to work on my set up.
The call comes in, and, as mentioned previously, the person interviewing me simply asks some questions and does not comment or ask any follow ups when you answer them. And then he asks me "What computer languages do you know?". I was taken by surprise. Nowhere in the position description did it mention that you needed or that it was prefered that you knew pc languagues. Had it said so, I would've not WASTED ME TIME preparing for this interview knowing fully well I was not qualified or at a disavantage. The way how the question was asked "what" and not "do you" also made it feel like it was fully required that I knew them, so, immediately I got the feeling that I had just failed this interview. Mind you, this was after answering confidently every single answer he had for me, about the company, the position, the program, etc.
I had the feeling the person interviewing me knew very little about the company or the products, and I more or less confirmed that when I found they were an intern. I really did not feel good that my fate was in the hands with someone with such little experience or knowledge of the company or of recruitment in general, and was already expecting the email I got a week later.
They pursued other applications. Rejecting is part of the process of finding a graduate job, but I do not appreciate my time being wasted. I would've not applied to a position that required any previous knowledge of pc languages, or whose recruitment process is basically a lucky draw of who gets through someone who has a whole month of work experience.
Reading through the employee reviews made me feel better, because, if this joke of a recruitment process didn't make it clear enough, seems like I dodged a bullet!
