As a hiring manager I have probably interviewed hundreds of candidates, created interview processes from scratch and worked closely with the talent team on strategy about hiring. By far this is the worst interview I ever witnessed in my career. It was clearly a one-way interview (do they like me). It passed 4 weeks from the moment I was referred by Spotify engineer until the initial call was scheduled. I know from experience this is the best way to lose talent, but I wanted to give them benefit of a doubt and not jump into conclusions. Two hours before the call interview was rescheduled for tomorrow without even asking me if I’m available or if that’s ok. Mind you, this was a call with the principal recruiter, someone who should set the standard for others. A day after, she was late (10 minutes) and not even an apology issued, only saying “these calls usually last for 15 mins so it’s ok”. At that moment I knew I don’t want to work with Spotify but I continued out of curiosity. She didn’t introduce herself. I was thinking.. if I’d to be hired for this EM role, as a hiring manager I would need to work with her or the team she’s leading to hire software engineers, and if she’s treating candidates like this, I would have trouble finding good people. She then asked me to talk about tech stack and after a few words she interrupted me saying she had a concern about my tech stack (it’s all written in my CV so I’m not sure she even looked at it as the concern would rise much sooner and we wouldn’t have wasted each other’s time). She then said she needs to speak to the hiring manager to find out if this is a hands-on role. I was surprised she doesn’t already have this information as a principal recruiter for this role. Nowhere in the job description did they mention a hands-on role. Otherwise if they did, I wouldn’t apply as it’s not what I’m looking for at the moment. They mentioned: people management, delivery, working with a PM on a roadmap etc. Coding not mentioned at all. The unpleasant interview continued but I wouldn’t bother person reading any further. At the end she asked me if I had any questions and I felt rushed to wrap up and was discouraged asking more. So in a true spirit of the two-way interview: Unfortunately, based on this interview, I can not recommend this employer.

First call with a recruiter was very short. The recruiter was first 5 min late and then it was over after 10 min. They only hardly asked any questions and then said thank you, no chance to elaborate.