I've been "recruited" twice by FAST, and both experiences have been demonstrably negative. To being, albeit a recent post-bacc graduate, I have three years of fulltime experience programming Python/Golang/NodeJS/Java distributed systems (using Docker and Kubernetes) as well as machine-learning and HPC experience with C/C++ and Python. My degrees include English (2013), Computer Science (2018), and Applied Mathematics (2018).
My first experience with FAST went smoothly until the day of the on-campus in-person interview. I knew things were going to be rough when the interview seemed not only disinterested but outright hostile. The cause appeared to be that'd I'd selected the 8:00am interview slot. The 32-question quiz was easy enough, and I did well. Then the interviewer began grilling me on past experience, less attempting to understand strengths or weaknesses and more looking for any excuse to attack my experience and end the interview. The final straw came when she asked a question regarding SQL joins. Now, if anyone had taken a look at my resume, it would've been quite clear I hadn't worked with SQL in almost two years. Instead the interviewer took it as opportunity to attempt to discredit my entire resume and began to personally insult me (I worked on my University's mobile application three years prior, we used a lot of Laravel and SQL then). I should have walked out of the interview at that point, but decided to see it to the end. I withdrew my application a day later.
My second interaction came recently over LinkedIn. Again, during our phone conversation the recruiter seemed completely uninterested or even contemptuous of my previous experience, casting it aside as being unrelated. After our brief fifteen-minute interview, I politely informed the recruiter I had several other pending offers from companies more relevant to my skillset and would not be moving forward with FAST.
FAST appears to enjoy their cultish atmosphere and has obviously had success in luring away naive recent or soon-to-be graduates away from better opportunities. My strong recommendation is to apply anywhere else.
