This was, without exaggeration, one of the most chaotic and disrespectful recruitment processes I have ever experienced. Nearly five months of silence, confusion, and constant chasing, with no sign that Qodea understands or cares that candidates have lives, commitments, or may be out of work.
The process begins with a pointless one‑way video interview that feels designed to save their time, not respect yours. It adds no value and sets the tone for what becomes a painfully slow, disorganised ordeal.
From there, everything falls apart. Weeks and months pass with no updates. Interviews happen, then the communication dies again. Every step requires you to chase repeatedly just to get basic information. Excuses pile up: endless interview rounds, hiring managers off sick, delays “working through things.” It’s amateur hour from start to finish.
After dragging me through every stage, they eventually rejected me with a lazy line about wanting “more experience.” If that were true, I should never have been progressed in the first place. It shows a complete lack of structure, clarity, and respect for candidates’ time.
Summary:
Qodea’s hiring process is dysfunctional, painfully slow, and disrespectful. Expect confusion, silence, and wasted months. This is not a serious or candidate‑focused organisation. Avoid.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Beyond (Manchester, England) in Dec 2025
Interview
The process was very quick. I applied via an external recruiter.
The technical interview was fun - typical pair programming, with the twist of the thing we were working on being a purposely terrible codebase - debugging it took me most of the interview.
A few days afterwards, I got a call offering me the position. However, the offer was far below my expectations (which they were aware of), and with the requirement of 3 days a week in-office (when applying, I explicitly said I will only consider fully-remote). The benefits offered were also nothing to write home about.
Complete radio silence after I countered with my expectations.
Clearly their recruitment process orbits around bait-and-switch. Not recommended.
I interviewed at Beyond (London, England) in Jul 2025
Interview
I had to go through a 3 stage process and 2 follow ups, it felt very thorough to test if I would be a good match. Aligning on culture and values was important.