I received an email from a recruiter via Linked In regarding an "invite only" recruiting event to take place in Cambridge, MA. The event was to be held roughly 2 months from when I received the initial communication. I was told that VMWare was looking to fill several engineering roles "up and down the stack", and that they were looking for "every background" and "all experience levels". After expressing my interest, I was instructed to take a 1 hour coding challenge via Interview Street (now Hacker Rank). The challenge was a single problem that covered basic data structures/algorithms and could be completed in the language of my choice. After completing the coding challenge with 100% accuracy, I was invited to attend the event, and VMWare connected me with the appropriate people to arrange travel, ask questions, etc. So far so good. 2 days before I was scheduled to attend the event, I received a call that my interview would be cancelled. The hiring managers were looking for a very specific skill set, which I did not have. While all the communication I had received up until this point stressed that VMWare was looking to fill multiple different roles, and was looking for "solid CS fundamentals" and the ability to "quickly ramp up and learn new technologies", it seems the hiring managers were looking specifically for kernel developers with extensive experience in C. I was very surprised to see that such a communication gap had occurred between the hiring team(s) and the recruiting team. I felt that this should have been caught much, much sooner. I had been in contact with VMWare for nearly 2 months! During this time I received very detailed documentation describing the general skills that they were looking for. That being said, I did appreciate them stopping the process as soon as it became clear there was not a match.