The recruitment process is completely dysfunctional! The recruiter unexpectedly called me one day (without following the industry practice of setting up an appointment via email first) for a phone screen. He asked all the standard questions to gauge my interest, but he didn't know the salary range, didn't know anything about the team, and couldn't give much details about the role beyond what is in the job posting! He asked me to prepare a presentation about my best recent project for a technical call with the hiring manager. I had to keep calling this recruiter for a total of 5 times (I kept count!), practically doing his job for him, just to set-up the technical screen. The hiring manager told me at the end of the call that he would like to move forward and have me speak with the VP. A whole week went by in total silence, so I called the recruiter to follow-up. He was completely oblivious that I had already spoken with the hiring manager and that he was suppose to organize a call with the VP for me. He made some excuse (which was probably a lie) to keep delaying this call. Another week goes by and I get a rejection email saying that they hired someone else! In summary, they strung me along for 3 weeks and that is utterly disgusting and disrespectful.

There was one interview with the data scientist director and two senior data scientists. They were nice initially but the two seniors did not seem very excited about their work when asked about it. It seemed easy to tell if they were not interested in your work and you as a person when they ask you to tell them about yourself. The application says you can know R or Python, but they made it very clear they’re moving towards Python only. I also felt that they kept trying to push the difference between the work I’ve done in academia versus the work they do because they would ask what I have done for projects but then say everything they do is more important and better. I get that there’s an industry difference, but it seems that there was a loss of understanding that I’m graduating college versus coming from the work industry and that the position is entry level. I walked away feeling like I did not get the job and confident that I would not enjoy working there.