I will start by saying it was one of the WORST experiences I had to go through EVER! Please read the whole story below (I have emails supporting every fact that you are about to read):
I was contacted by a recruiter on February of 2014 for an available position as a Support Engineer at Hortonworks. After a quick chat, he arranged a phone interview with one of the HR people of the company.
During the phone interview, I was asked about my current work, my current salary and my visa situation. I explained to the interviewer ,in detail, my current situation, and that I would be needing an H1B visa or a J1 visa. She told me "dont worry about it, if your candidacy is successful, we will handle the rest". She was also quite rude at some point during the interview.
After that interview, there was another phone interview with an engineer. That interview went smoothly, he asked me some technical questions and that was it.
The next step was a phone interview with the hiring manager. Everything went smoothly with that interview too. I was asked some technical questions, some background questions and I was also asked about my visa situation, where again, I gave in detail my exact situation.
The next step was a 5 hour onsite interview with 6 people, including the hiring manager and the HR person of the 2nd phone interview. Once again, typical technical questions from the technical people, and I was asked once again by the HR person regarding my visa situation. I, again, explained my situation in detail, and she informed me that the deadline for the H1B visa was over, so they would go with a J1 visa.
After 10 days, from the day of the interview, I emailed them, as they hadnt contacted me yet to let me know whether I was successful or not. The HR person emailed me back straigh away saying that I was unsuccessful.
A week after that, I was contacted by that HR person again, saying that the hiring manager would like to give me one more shot. They gave me 3 weeks to study some topics. After the 3 week period, they scheduled another 5 hour onsite interview. During that interview, I was once again asked by the HR person about my visa situation. Again, she told me that they would take care of everything and that I shouldnt be worried about it.
They emailed me after 4 days saying I was successful and they gave me an online exercise, and a week to complete it. After a week I had a phone interview with the technical lead to check the exercise. The exercise was correct and he told me that he would meet with the hiring manager to take a final decision.
A week after, I was contacted again by the HR person saying that I was successful and that they were starting the hiring process. I was not contacted again from then onwards, and I emailed them back after 10 days, to check how things were going. The HR person told me that they decided not to carry on with my hiring process as they did'nt want to handle my visa situation.
Note here that I had just turned down a job offer from another company.
Having lost everything, I emailed the hiring manager explaining my situation, and after a week the manager of HR contacted me by phone, apologizing about the situation and he said "this is unacceptable from our end, give me a week to try and fix things for you".
And that was the last time I heard from Hortonworks. I emailed them back but they never replied again.
As a result, I lost a job offer, I lost 3 months of valuable time going through interviews with Hortonworks, I spent a good amount of money travelling and applying for visa related stuff and I DID NOT even get a reply from them. On top of al this my deadline to get a visa via some other way (student visa perhaps) expired and I was forced to leave the US.
Very unprofessional and disappointing. I would never recommend this company to anyone.
