The process itself was fairly routine. After I sent my resume, I was contacted by their recruiting team, and a first interview was scheduled with one of their recruiting team. The person who I spoke to sounded very inexperienced, and I'd characterize the interaction as a softball interview. No hard hitting questions, and it was clear that they hadn't done a lot of real interviewing. In any case, I was passed along to the next step, which was another phone conversation with the hiring manager.
This meeting was scheduled, but when the appointment came, they didn't show up. Just as I was to contact the company to see what was going on, they finally called me to apologize, and to reschedule the meeting. Even though an hour of my time was wasted, I went along, and after recontacting recruiting the appointment was moved to Monday, March 4.
As I was doing my pre-interview prep, I went to Mist's web site, and saw the announcement (posted just an hour before my interview) that Mist was acquired by Juniper Networks, Well, there's nothing anyone involved can do about that. Anyway, the interviewer did call at the scheduled time, and said that they didn't feel that the interview could go on considering the announcement. I agreed, and understood. They said they needed to sort out the situation, and if they didn't get back to me within 48 hours to reach out. They didn't call, so I called and emailed them. I never received a response.
This morning, I sent an email to recruiting asking what happened. This is now 2 weeks after the announcement, and considering the comments of some other interviewees I didn't have much hope of ever hearing from them. Several hours later, I did get a response from the initial recruiter. They said that they were not aware that my interview never took place, but they did confirm that Mist had frozen further hiring, and my candidacy had ended.
Naturally, when an acquisition happens, you figure that they won't be making any new hires, especially among sales people. So, this was not unexpected. However, the second interviewer promised a confirmation about this, and never responded. It's just a lack of respect for the hiring process, and of candidates. Makes you wonder what it might have been like to work there.
Have fun being swallowed up by the larger company, guys...
