Connected with a recruiter at a major industry event. Epic was encouraging job seekers to scan a QR code and fill out a form to be added to their candidate pool. The recruiter on-scene had a conversation with me, telling me how much they love working at Epic, and told me to connect with them on LinkedIn and reach out to them personally if I saw any role I thought I'd be a good fit for. Even provided me with their personal LinkedIn QR code to scan to send them a connection request, and enthusiastically took my business card. I went home, found a role that was a totally perfect fit for my experience and skill set, applied, and sent the recruiter a LinkedIn message (they still hadn't accepted my connection request). I linked to the role in my message. This person never accepted my connection request nor did they ever reply to my message. I ended up commenting on a post they made, letting them know I sent them a message. Soon after that, I got a generic follow-up email from them that just seemed like something they sent everyone who filled out the form at the event. It said to let them know if there was any particular role I was interested in, which was a little annoying because I'd already done that. I replied to the email and let them know that I applied to the Editorial Writer role, but the job listing was no longer on their Careers page. Sometime after that, a different recruiter reached out to me (from a no-reply email address with no email signature and no way of knowing who I was speaking to) requesting a 15-minute intro call. I immediately booked some time. When the day of the meeting came, this person said they intended to schedule 30 minutes, not 15, and asked if I could stay longer. Another red flag that these people are extremely disorganized. But since I was available, I said it was fine. This person claimed it wouldn't be a technical interview, but then proceeded to ask me a lot of questions about my work and abilities. Frankly, this person didn't seem like they understood what I do for a living or how my skills and experience are exactly what they were asking for in the JD. I also thought it was rich that they seemed concerned about the multiple short stints on my resume that are an unfortunate result of non-performance-related layoffs — when Epic recently laid off 830 people (16% of their workforce). It's strange that a recruiter in 2024 would question someone in tech getting hit by a lot of layoffs in the last few years. I asked whether this was a new role or a backfill. The recruiter got a little hesitant and said it was a backfill, that the person left because they were made an offer elsewhere they couldn't refuse, but that the role had been "open for a while." That seemed odd, with as many out-of-work content marketers and writers/editors there are today trying to get into the gaming industry. The recruiter mentioned that I had "multiple" broken links in my portfolio and said I should clean them up and let them know when they were fixed before they passed it along to the hiring manager. They claimed they were my "partner" through this process and wanted to be sure I was in a strong position as a candidate. They said if I didn't hear from them by end of week, I should send them an email. But that I should definitely expect to hear from them by the beginning of the next week at the latest. After the call, I pored over my portfolio and found only one broken link; it turned out the link was still live, there had just been a change made to the URL with no redirect set up, which was a fast fix. I'm not sure what other links they saw that were broken; I saw none. I immediately fixed the link after our call, triple-checked the rest of the links in my portfolio and featured content on LinkedIn (there were no issues), and sent a follow-up email to the recruiter that my portfolio and featured content could be shared with the hiring manager. They never replied. End of week came, still hadn't heard from them, so I sent another email. No reply. A week later, the recruiter sent a generic rejection email with no explanation as to why I'd been rejected. Given how strong of a match my background was for this role, I asked for feedback as to why I was rejected. It just didn't make any sense. As of the time of writing, they still haven't replied and I expect they won't. I suspect the recruiter didn't understand what I do for a living, which is why they shouldn't have been trying to ask technical questions about my role that they didn't seem to be in a position to ask and which should've been coming from the hiring manager instead. It seemed like they were caught up in completely petty details, like me being laid off due to reasons entirely out of my control, or having a lone broken link in my portfolio that was instantly fixed (and wasn't broken just days before). These people were wasting my time and jerking me around from the moment I filled out their form. Awful impression of this company.