Poor recruitment process. Disengaged recruiters. Classic bait and switch actions. Dismissive and arrogant Hiring Managers who believe that outside transferable skills aren’t “worthy” of being deployed within Ocado. Applied for a Project Manager -Engineering role and completed the initial lone video interview assessment. After successfully progressing from this stage and accepting an offer for a virtual interview, I found it difficult to maintain communication with the recruiter who it seemed, just did not care. The recruiter was no where to be found for confirmation once I had accepted the next round offer. I called 4+ times, sent emails and left messages over a three day period. I ended up contacting a random recruiter on LinkedIn who escalated this for this me. Once I reached the virtual interview I was told this was not a Project Manager role but an “Engineer role that demanded project management skill”. This was completely unacceptable and a classic bait and switch action by Hiring Managers. It was a pointless process from here on, as the Hiring Managers tried to gauge my technical ability on skills and experience that were not included on the original job spec or on my CV. Complete waste of time. To Mr Tim Steiner, your technology and vision for the future of grocery delivery is both inspiring and exciting, but to manifest the vision, please address this internal culture. If it is not addressed you will continue to turn away qualified talent and also upset people who are highly likely to be Ocado customers. Take heed of companies like Amazon who engineer these aspects into their recruitment processes.

After interviewing with five people, I was rejected on the basis of lacking online grocery experience. Firstly, they could have gaged this by looking at my CV, and saved me time and energy by not inviting me to interview. Secondly, they need diversity of experience, not clones working for them.