First thing first, I did not take the offer at Milieu so I have no comments regarding their work culture, management style and such. I am only sharing the experience that I have, and they include the interview and the background check process. About the interview, it was normal with some knowledge-based questions and a lot of scenario questions. Not too difficult. I believe anyone who has some basic knowledge about social services and working with people who are being marginalized can get through. I was interviewed in the morning and received the offer in the afternoon. The next step was reference check as well as submitting the necessary documents to HR. It was infuriating and I would say I did not feel respected enough by the staff who I had contact with. Here is the list of things that really frustrated me: 1: HR urged me to submit all the documents within 2 days (less than 48 hours). These documents included 4 online learning modules with quizzes at the end, medical forms and test results, and other documents and consent forms with a lot of reading. I simply didn't understand how a candidate could finish them all in such a short notice, without touching base with me prior to giving me a short deadline. Maybe if you really devote your time and cancel anything and everything thing you have on your schedule you can do it, but not me. 2: The language used in the email for reference check was infuriating. As one of my references said, she received a follow-up email asking her to finish the reference form. In that email, she was told that I, the candidate, "would lose it" (the job opportunitiy). I have seen many unprofessional emails but emotionally blackmailing, or threatening depends on how you see it, a referee during reference check just to speed things up was the first time. This was infuriatingly unprofessional and it was lucky that I contacted my referees beforehand or otherwise I wouldn't know this. Frankly, I was feeling so disrespected that I felt like I was begging for a job. It was this incident that made want to reject the offer. I remember when I was preparing for this interview I looked up comments people had about this company. I was quite shocked about how much negative opinions were voiced, but I still saw some positive ones so I had some hopes about working here. Well, what I have to say is these comments surely exist for some reasons and you should think twice before applying for or accepting a position in this company. To be fair, I didn't actually work here so I can't provide any objective information about the working experience, and I have no intention to say anything about that. But I guess when you are treated like how I was at such an early stage of reference check, you may understand why I have low hopes of working here and rejected the offer.
