I had a fairly shocking experience with Scout24 in Berlin. I was interviewed for a director position for an engineering department. The hiring manager expressly said that they are looking to change the way the department is organised, its competencies, and to bring it to the next level. Based on that, and given my expertise in transformation and improvement, I accepted to proceed with the interviewing process—I was asked to prepare a case study, and had four sets of interviews (half a day) via videocall. This involved an HR interview, a case study interview with the hiring manager, an interview with three stakeholders, and an interview with the team. However, what the hiring manager had told me was not at all in line with the view of the organisation, as expressed directly to me by one of the stakeholders. Following my half day of interviews, I was asked two days later to undergo a further interview with one of the stakeholders, who claimed he had insufficient information about me from my previous interview with the stakeholders. He informed me that everyone else (a total of 11 interviewers) had wanted to hire me. But he was a dissenting voice, hence the request for a yet further interview. This additional interview was conducted solely by this stakeholder. During this further interview he informed me that there is no need or room for change in the department, or in the organisation, as (he claimed) Scout24 are already doing everything perfectly. Their product is great, all their processes are optimised, they are working with the latest technology, and there is nothing that they could do better or improve upon. He also made clear that the team members, in the department I was interviewing for, don't need to acquire new skills—what I had advocated at interview--and they should carry on just fixing laptops and listening to their music. He was basically of the opinion that people should not be given an opportunity to grow professionally, and took a very utilitarian view, devoid of organisational responsibility towards employees. His clear message was that people should just be used for what they do, and be happy with it. I really felt bad for the people working there, the way they are viewed, and how that will affect their professional development (or lack thereof). This stakeholder turned the interview into a gender issue: he admitted that he hadn't prepared interview questions (in the previous stakeholder interview), and didn't have a structure for the interview. But as he explained it, that was, in his view acceptable, as all the (other) candidates who were male, took the lead. By contrast, I, as the only female candidate, did not take the lead the way the men did—he implied I was at fault for not “leading” the interview, as the men had, rather than expecting the stakeholders to have prepared some questions they wished to put to me. I naively thought that, as Scout24 had invited me for this interview, that they would actually have specific questions that they might want answered and was surprised to hear that this fact was subsequently levelled at me as an implied criticism of my gender. At the end of the additional interview, which lasted 35 minutes, the stakeholder informed me that I am not a good fit for Scout24, as they are very small and the organisation doesn’t need a transformational leader, and terminated the video call, without any notice. I must admit, I was left speechless. The issue Scout24 is facing in terms of lack of diversity and bias against women also came through from other interviewers: I was told that it was about time that Scout24 hired a woman in a management function, as the company is made up of about 90% males, and that the department I was interviewing for had had only male managers. During the interviewing process, it also transpired that Scout24 has a high turnover of staff, especially at the management level, which results in a very unstable environment for team members. Following this shocking interview with the stakeholder, I decided to write to the hiring manager to clarify the role, the stakeholder’s view that the organisation doesn’t have any room for improvement, and explicit insistence that the department team members could not and should not expect reasonable career prospects. I received no answer from him. Instead, I was subsequently informed by HR that Scout24 decided to offer the position to another (male) candidate. The lack of ambition, lack of basic human respect and professionalism, and the level of complacency I was confronted with during this interviewing process was really appalling. I would surmise that the really bad customer reviews for Scout24 on different sites do have a clear basis, which has been equally apparent in my experiences interacting with the Scout24 engineering management.