I applied via LinkedIn Job posting, with decent years of experience I was directly contacted by the Country Head who operates from Delhi. I had more than an hour phone call with him as a first round after a formal email from him to confirm about this phone call. He was decent and the discussion was more about my past work exp. and why in past I never approached Meltwater for any opportunities given the similar work background I had while I pivoted my career in past. In this call he said there will be a Zoom call with him/his team and I'll be part of some activities as a part of assessment (also asked me to go through Meltwater's website properly) for this Zoom call and post that there will be a final call with his reporting manager who looks after entire EMEA. Cut Short now I'll talk more about the group call/meeting/Zoom call whatever since it was a Covid/Lockdown scene It was a 26th January (Republic Day/holiday) but that was not a big deal for me, but what was surprising (not pleasant) that there was other 10 candidates comprising of few freshers, few with 2+ years of exp. and few with 4-5 years of experience and I guess it was only me plus maybe 1 more candidate who was that experienced and WE WERE ALL EVALUATED/ASSESSED TOGETHER for a group activity for 2 different roles - How?? From Meltwater there were 6 Members on board to assess us, they gave a quick Company Overview (presentation) and what they were looking for. There are companies who only select IIMs and ISBs at a Corporate level, similarly I felt Meltwater Delhi team had some kind of fetish for LSR (Delhi University) and DU, there were 3-4 candidates from LSR, so too much LSR I heard that day and these LSR candidates did have some leeway - anyway. They split us in group of 3-4 members and asked each group to pitch Meltwater Services to a client/organization, we were given 10 mins time to decide which company and what services each member should pitch. Then there was a solo activity wherein each candidate was asked to talk about their one passion and how they would sell the same to others. In the group activity, I gave two ideas one for myself and one for other member, every member should have one idea to talk about and (to whom we are going to pitch those ideas CEO/Marketing Head/Corp Com etc. was like not even a minute thing) rather I believed in focusing more on what better ideas you can pitch, unluckily we didn't came out as a good performing team not even average even when contributed fairly well as a team member and covered up for another member - I agree here they can evaluate that how a Junior and a Senior are collaborating because in real time that is what it is. After this call I didn't hear from them, not even a feedback email - No HR in the scene was weird. What was weird about this entire process was how can you evaluate freshers and experienced candidates together, it wasn't a race, here you have to assess the experienced ones with what additional they can bring on the table and how Meltwater can leverage on that, the parameters are different for a experienced and a fresher - going by their logic then pay the same salaries also to the fresher and the experienced. It felt like there was this bicycle race where someone didn't know how to ride a bicycle, someone has upgraded from a bicycle to a bike and some who loves only riding bicycles, so technically it's not Apples to Apples comparison and still you're assessing them all together with the sake of making their (the panel/employer) task easy. An experienced person will have domain expertise/ecosystem understanding and evolved professional experience and a passion to collaborate and build something better. Whereas a fresher or just a rookie will have this zeal and enthusiasm and new ideas (and we know today's Gen Z are smarter - not denying on that) there were smart bunch of candidates with cool ideas in that Zoom call. The way it was evaluated/executed was weird and unfair, there was No Value given to people with good amount of experience (and the experience is not just the number of years but all the slogging and earned some recognition while learning from different seniors/clients/teams), they could have evaluated the fresher bunch in one call and experienced ones in another with different activities, experienced ones with more technical round and domain-based evaluation. Even big companies have time to evaluate candidates on one-on-one basis across rounds, and these people don't have time for two team/Zoom meeting by splitting the freshers and experienced ones...wow. And their inclination was more towards people speaking polished English and LSR kids and who can talk to clients in that polished accent and doesn't matter if their core/basics are not in place (because that comes from experience, it doesn't come overnight...doesn't).