Referred for a role, then ghosted after interviewing with 5 people (3 rounds). I was referred for a Quality Manager role that I was very excited about. After the initial HR screening call, the other interviews/rounds went rather quickly. I knew early on how many rounds there were and how many candidates were advancing to each round. After interviewing with 5 people everything went silent. I reached out multiple times for follow-up/feedback and couldn’t get a direct answer from either HR or the hiring manager if I was still in contention. The responses I did receive were just vague enough that I wasn’t sure if I was just waiting for other same-round interviews to finish, or if other candidates already advanced. Eventually, I saw the job listing was removed from the website so took that as a sign and reached out to the person who referred me. Sure enough, someone else was hired. Never received a “thank you for your time” or similar email. We’re adults, we can take no for an answer. But it’s so disrespectful (especially for a referral) to not give people of the courtesy of just saying “no thank you” after they’ve put their time and energy into preparing for and going through multiple rounds of interviews. Furthermore, some of the interviewers were not prepared/appropriate for the process. In one of my later interviews, literally 5 minutes into it, the woman verbatim told me “I’m not really sure what to ask you.” Another interviewer started asking me about what experience I had with software development. The role had nothing to do with software development. It’s no wonder I didn’t get the job. On paper, Rhythm sounds great. Perhaps it’s a great place to work, but my interview experience was poor.
