I first applied for a bunch of Copywriter/Translator roles at this company through some Chinese job portals; the recruiter got back to me really quickly, but set me up with an English Technical Editor role with Alibaba Cloud (the business unit). I proceeded to do free work (aka a "written test") for Alibaba Cloud: a somewhat difficult editing test that required me to do lots of research on database technology-related terms. I completed and submitted my test attempt within about 3 working days, but the recruiter took a really long time to get back to me subsequently with the interview arrangement. Initially, I thought it was because Chinese New Year 2024 happened to be coming up soon at that point, so the interviewers must be busy and/or preparing to go on the 2-week holiday in China. However, even after the CNY 2024 period, the recruiter still took a long time to reply me regarding the interview arrangement. On 06-Mar-2024, the recruiter finally replied, but with news that "the role applied headcount was still under pending due to uncertain hiring needs." In short, I did the free work for nothing. They couldn't even confirm an internal matter like that BEFORE asking job candidates to do the free work. Never mind. At least the recruiter automatically offered to process my application for an English Content Strategist position with the Alibaba.com business unit. However, I was told that I would likely have to do a separate written test (aka "free work") for this position because it is with a different department. Of course, I was not very keen on that, but I still communicated that I was interested to do the interview. Due to the time difference between me and the US-based interviewer, we had some back and forth regarding the interview time. We settled on a time for the first interview, only for the recruiter to email me less than an hour before the interview "that interviewer had an emergency meeting and it was postponed which is conflict with 2:00 pm time, really sorry for this situation, we might need to reschedule, and could I know what times will you be free next Monday& Wednesday before 2:00 pm BJT GMT+8?" I had to wake up early for that interview, but okay, never mind. These things happen, but I was quite pissed about the recruiter's new request regarding the interview time because I am in Denmark, and the recruiter's suggested time range would have been any time before 7 AM in my European time zone. In the end, we decided on a new time slot where I would have to stay up late at night in my time zone, while the US-based interviewer would be taking the interview in the late afternoon in their time zone. The rescheduled interview happened as planned, albeit with some technical difficulties at the start due to incorrect instructions provided beforehand by the recruiter. Disappointingly, the interviewer didn't even seem like she had read my CV or portfolio documents carefully; I had to recite stuff from those documents to her. By the way, most interviewers I have had to date are this lazy as well. Anyway, I had bad vibes about the interviewer throughout the interview, and my gut feeling was that I would be rejected after the first interview. True enough, I received the canned rejection email from the recruiter earlier today (25-Mar-2024). At this point, I have been in Pactera's recruitment process for about 3 months with the result being nothing but a huge loss for me: wasted time and energy on those email exchanges, the free work from me, and the bad interview with that US-based interviewer from the Alibaba.com business unit. What's new, right? If you're a fellow jobseeker reading this, this is just the sad reality for people like us these days.