A recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn, and we scheduled a 30-minute screening. She was really nice and thorough, explaining that there would be five rounds of technical interviews: two LeetCode-style coding interviews, one focused on ML structure, one on ML design, and a behavioral interview. She moved me forward to the first technical interview. However, HR kept sending me emails asking me to sign an NDA. I signed it multiple times and even replied with the signed document attached, but my interview was still canceled, and they asked me to reschedule. Then, a few hours later, the person in charge of scheduling called me, saying I had multiple interviews lined up. When I checked, it turned out he had the wrong candidate. He even sent me a text with the wrong name, clearly meant for someone else. What was frustrating was that he didn’t even apologize for the mix-up. At that point, I decided to cancel my application. The process was taking too long, and with such disorganization, it didn’t make sense to continue. Most companies only have two technical rounds, so this whole experience felt unnecessarily complicated.

Totally a mess. Attended a recruiter screen call and received the invitation the same day. But the next round with the hiring manager was scheduled for two weeks later (although I tried to schedule it ASAP)! The hiring manager delayed the interview by one day without any clear reason, but the recruiter insisted that there were 2 headcounts available. Even the rejection was delayed to the following week.