Having been head-hunted by Smart421 for a Senior Cloud Architect position over a period of two weeks, with almost daily contact with the very friendly Smart421 recruiter, I was given a detailed Job Specification which was a 100% match for my previous experience and current skills. I was under the impression that the Smart421 AWS Architecture team had all reviewed my LinkedIn profile and references from all my previous contract based projects. On the day of the interview I was all prepared with questions to ask, as I was very interested in working for the company in the senior position on offer, but I was not prepared for what happened. I had no idea that the first interview was to be a technical test, I was shocked and stressed from the 1st minute of the telephone interview, making me uneasy and slightly nervous which reflected in my answers to the interviewers technical questions. Normally telephone interviews I have are a two way process to find out more about the company, the people, the projects, the culture and how you can fit into them. Not with the Smart421 recruitment process I experienced, to be frank if that's the normal way that new permanent employees are treated then I am glad that after 10 minutes the interview came to an abrupt halt, as it's not the company culture I'm looking for. I had spent days researching the company to find out now, that it was a complete waist of my week-end, and that my many great employer references from my years of on-premise and cloud architecture experience working for large blue chip companies, counted for nothing. I understand it's more cost effective to do telephone interviews these days, rather than pay the candidates face-to-face interview expenses, but at least if they did not insist on technical tests first, then they would have a larger pool of qualified and experienced candidates to choose from, who are more likely to be happy to accept an offer to work for the company long-term, and have less employee turnover. My advice for Smart421 is to not to put potential employees through a technical test first, but to find out if the candidates have the right attitude first, then aptitude for the position.