This happened to me and I was able to troubleshoot their environment and pass their test faster than the internal candidate and “won” the job
it’s all a ruse to see how you react
That happened to me and the internal candidate got the job. Fortunately they offered me a different position and eventually they hired me
Well played. Thanks for nothing.
In my experience it’s the other way around. I mean why promote somebody who knows how everything works when you could get some jackass who’s failed upward high enough to get your old bossc job? That way they can come in with their “great” ideas, screw everything up, and then fail upwards some more.
Likely playing you both off each other and seeing where they can get a better deal
It happened to me, I got contacted for an offer (I was working in a niche industry area).
They had above 50 candidates with the required qualifications. After two online interview they invited me for a onsite interview. It’s in another country so they are paying for the flights tickets and hotel.
I’m onsite for the day, I have interviews, visit of the place, the museum, I’m invited for lunch there, more interviews in the afternoon.
In the 3 candidates that were there, one was a guy who already candidated for the exact same opening 5 years ago, did not got selected for this job at the time but they did not want him to go so they hired him on another position until the main position opens again.
So without any surprises, he got selected.
This shit literally just happened to me. Went thru 4 rounds of interviews over the course of a month, with the last one being in person and over 3.5 hours long, meeting with half the damned office. The way they were talking to me they acted like I had the job, then yesterday I got a rejection email from them. I mean WTF!?!?
What industry has four rounds and a 3.5 hour interview session? To me, that wreaks of incompetence. Unless you’re going to be the VP of something that’s just inconsiderate and wasteful. Even a senior dev position should take at most two hour sessions and a 30-min code practical.
My guess is it was some HR person’s whole job to “enhance hiring practices” and this is what they came up with. Probably got a promotion out of it for the great work they did. And they’ll probably get another one when they “streamline an inefficient hiring process” next year.
Senior Systems Engineer…
Curious… Did they compensate you for your time? At some point that’s gotta cross some threshold, otherwise companies could have year-long “interview” sessions filled with 40-hour weekly interview questions and tasks.
Well, mind you the first interview was essentially only a 15 min phone call with their HR recruiter. Then I had to do an hour long AI interview, which was absolutely irritating and pointless. Take those out and it was a typical 2 round interview process.
This stuff is super disheartening
That has happened to me before. Also: we did a reorg and the team you were interviewing with no longer exists. Also: the manager who made you an offer was fired, so we are rescinding your offer.
I graduated college right as the economy tanked dramatically. Local companies were rabidly trying to recruit me, I had a dozen legit job offers.
Then, a week before I graduated, they all pulled their offers one by one. Everyone I knew by name at all of these companies was laid off at the same time. Spent the next two years temping because I was “overqualified” to work at companies like Best Buy.
My favorite was when the CEO decided to put an immediate moratorium on hiring and just fired all the recruiters, so my whole interview process suddenly went cold. I had no idea why until I eventually read about it in the news.
That’s exactly how I lost a full-time technical position at Apple. Weird.
trust me, it’s even worse from the other side. my last job was in industrial production, and I only took it because I knew there would be an opening in their quality department in about a year, and I could get a leg up by learning about all the processes and such. so over the next year I work up to the second-highest position in the production department. the quality position finally opens up, I apply for it, all of the non-management people in both production and quality departments agree I’d be the best bet out of all the internal applicants. after two interviews they tell me they’re going to look for an external candidate; they said I had everything they were looking for, but a lack of “project ownership experience.” whose fault is that? this was the second job I’d ever had, and the first laid me off after only a few months during covid; if you want me to have experience you have to give me the opportunity. anyway they hired some other guy, and I kept working in production. a year later the other guy was still coming to me at least weekly to ask really basic questions about production procedures. I quit not long after that
So, I come from the fascist parade about persimmons
Unironically continuously breaking new ground on how close I can get to landing a job, without landing a job. It’s frankly astounding.
Just last week, had a great series of interviews, bossman says he’ll send me a contract. Monday morning, I text him to ask if there’s a problem with email or some other hold-up, am told a system is hung but I’ll get it. Tuesday morning get a text from a completely different bossman informing me that bossman 1 has been fired, and he’ll pick up from there. Had another interview, with him now. Last word, I’ll get the contract this coming week. Uh huh.
I have, of course, other things in the pipeline but they’re not as far progressed. Plus, that is not even an outlier, that’s how every fucking thing in my life goes.
Yes, the Days of the Truman Show memes are upon us!
Glad I finally watched it for the first time two weeks ago!
I once interviewed a guy after HR had already talked to him. Told him straight up the permanent job would preferably go to an internal candidate, but we still needed someone like him temporarily, even though HR had told him it was for a permanent job. He still took it and the internal candidate was promoted 9 months later. I’m still friends with the guy that took the temp job.
Nine months of temp work is nothing to sneeze at. Better than my buddy who showed up on the first day of his new job at a startup and they went out of business before lunch.
I have a cousin who immediately got laid off from a machining job at a bike manufacturer. The company went out of business right after they hired him. He got a month to work there.
Well, time to collect 6 months of unemployment benefits.
I once had a job wait until the night before I was supposed to start to tell me that they had decided to go with an internal candidate.
Just do an assblast. Minivan consequences!
Just let them know you’re planning to move abroad for better job opportunities and see how quickly they offer you a C-suite position
