I did a 45 minute phone screen with the recruiter for the role (who did a nice job) and was then set up to do a second phone screen with one of the directors in the Palo Alto Networks recruiting organization a week later. The scheduled time arrived, but no call. Ten minutes later, I emailed the person I was scheduled to speak with to see if they needed to reschedule. I never got a response to that email.
14 minutes after our scheduled time, my phone finally rang and my second phone screen was off and running. This director never apologized for being late, admitted that they had not had a chance to look at my profile but then indicated that it wouldn't matter because they normally didn't read them anyway. This person proclaimed to be "very good at interviewing" so I didn't need to worry that they essentially knew my name, phone number and lord knows what else. I guess this person felt so strongly about their interviewing skills that not knowing anything about the person on the other end of the phone, me, wasn't an issue.
But it certainly was an issue for me. We had a short conversation but my decision was made less than two minutes into the call. There's no way I'd work for anyone that arrogant and if this person was in a senior leadership role, I shudder to think that else is going on in their organization. No thank you.
As we wrapped the call, I was told I'd hear from someone the next day and shocker, I didn't. I waited a week out of courtesy before sending an email thanking them for their time and letting them know I did not feel there was a good fit.
I'm a recruiter (part of the HR organization vs an outside agency recruiter) who's hired hundreds of candidates in the Bay Area. I can say with 100% confidence that recruiting organizations have absolutely no excuse for not providing a good candidate experience - even if you consider that only 1 person is hired for each open role and everyone else that's applied gets a less-than-optimal outcome. They didn't get the job.
That candidate-to-offer math means that recruiters must deliver a ton of bad news each week and only generate an offer every other week or so. That's just how recruiting works and delivering bad news is something that recruiters just have to do. It sucks and is the worst part of the job in my opinion. But you absolutely must do it 100% of the time.
So why don't recruiting teams provide feedback? They know how damning it is to their brand (it leads to reviews like this one) yet companies like Palo Alto Networks leave candidates in the dark anyway. That's crazy! Why do they do it?
In my experience, it's generally some mix of the following:
- Poor leadership that allows this to happen
- Arrogance in thinking it doesn't matter
- Laziness
- Overwhelmed recruiters (too many roles open at one time to do a good job)
- Spotty process where one person thinks another is going to close out and neither does
My advise to all candidates is to RUN, don't walk, from companies that treat candidates poorly. Regardless of why these organizations choose to treat candidates so poorly, it's an extremely strong signal that their company culture may not be geared toward treating employees well either.
There's a saying that's been around recruiting circles for decades that says you are never going to feel as much love from a company as you do while they're trying to recruit you. Now, maybe you do end up being the lucky person who gets all the love and the offer letter. Congratulations. That's fantastic. But you should consider how you feel about working for an organization that treats others who didn't make it all the way to the offer stage like dirt.