Was contacted by a recruiter about a Project Coordinator contract role with Maximus. The job description was very brief, roughly 10 lines. It mentioned a strong proficiency in MS Project, but did not go into detail about their definition of proficiency. After sending my resume, I was selected for an interview.
The morning before the interview, the recruiter reached out, stating that they wanted to know more about my MS Project experience. I responded quickly to his email and heard nothing back, so I assumed we were good to go with the interview.
Then, at 6pm my time (9pm her time), I get a voicemail from an HR representative. I called her right back but she did not answer. In my voicemail, I said "Thanks for your call, I'm about to step into dinner and will be unavailable for the rest of the night, but I'm happy to touch base in the morning". About 10 minutes later, she called me back. I stepped out of my dinner because it seemed like the call was important to take.
She said sorry to call so late, your information just passed through my desk (even though she was the one to send me a meeting invite the week before). Then she went on to say we've had some interviewees who did not meet the criteria we had in mind and in an effort to not waste anyone's time, I need to know more about your MS Project project experience. I told her I'd already emailed the other recruiter, but filled her in on how I'd used it in the past - mostly for tracking projects, assigning tasks, and doing reporting. She seemed to scoff a bit and said, "we're looking for more than that - we use it for events, etc., you have to know how to do that (this was NOT a included in the job description), I don't think they'll want to do the interview tomorrow." So I said, "Ok. so we'll just cancel the interview then?" And she responded with "I'll email you tomorrow."
Fast forward to tomorrow, and I just receive a meeting cancellation.
I'm actually thankful I did not meet their criteria.
This was one of the most unprofessional situations I've been in during my job seeking process. It seems like there is a serious communication issue within the company and little to no work life balance.