Lengthy and VERY BAD Hiring Practices - Here is why:
End of Jan -
I was first contacted and interviewed by HR. At the HR interview, I was informed there would be five interviews and that the position was to start at the end of Feb. Over the next 2 weeks, I passed through all five rounds of the interview (HR, Behavorial, Skills, Case Study, Final in-office confirming interview) and was chosen to be the top candidate for the position.
Mid-Feb –
At the final confirming interview, I met with the sr. executive (partner) in office who extended a verbal job offer to me at the conclusion of the interview and told me a formal offer would be extended by the end of the week. Shortly after the final in-office interview, HR called me to confirm my interest to work for Accenture to which I indicated yes and that Accenture was my top choice for employer. A week went by, nothing happened and the job offer letter I was told I would have received by then was nowhere in sight. I followed up with HR. HR said Accenture was interested in extending an offer to me and that I was their top candidate for the position, but they were waiting on a project they had in the pipeline to open up which was now likely to start in early March (rather than at end of Feb that HR had initially told me 2 weeks ago), so a formal job offer letter would not be coming until the following week. I had another job offer from another big company at the time. However, since HR reassured me that an offer was coming, I declined the other job offer I had when the deadline to respond to the other job offer approached. I let HR know that I had declined the other job offer I had with the understanding a formal job offer from Accenture would be coming.
End of Feb & March -
Now it's has been a month since I've started the in interviewing process and I still did not get the job offer letter Accenture said they were going to extend more than 2 weeks ago. Having declined the other job offer after Accenture said they were going to extend, I contacted HR. HR now said the project they had in the pipeline for this position has been postponed until 2 or 3 months later until April or May and even there was no guarantee that it will happen. Well, this sounds like every candidate's dream to hear after they had gone through and prepared for five rounds of interviews, numerous emails and phone calls back-and-forth reassuring a formal job offer letter would be forthcoming, so the candidate declined the other offers they have had, and now just to turnaround and pretty much said "We don't know when this project will come through, so you will have to wait indefinitely before we can officially bring you onboard!" Isn't that lovely! What a waste of everyone's time and efforts.
In additon, I later saw the same job posting (the exact same one HR had recruited me for, repeatedly told me I was their top candidate, and they were no longer actively recruiting candidates). HR responded to my inquiry of the same posting by essentially saying this is how Accenture casts their nets to fish for candidates when in fact they have absolutely no position opened for that specific opening. To me, this is a fat lie to my face. Not to mention it is a very disrepectful, if not even unethnical, hiring practice to gauge the candidates pool without having an actual position opened to waste the candidates' time.
Personally, I'd would have been very acceptive of the decision if I didn't get the job because Accenture found other candidates to be more qualified than me. However, it was not the case. I found the way Accenture handled the situation to be utterly UNACCEPTABLE. What's even worse is, I did some research online and spoke to different professionals in my large networking circles about this afterwards and found out quite a few of my colleagues have had the same or very similar situations happened to them in the past. So it appears Accenture has a habit and history of doing their poor hiring practices.
At no point in this whole process has Accenture made one single apology for leading on the candidate into believing that a final job offer letter would be made, especially since a verbal job offer was made to the candidate (both from HR and the sr. executive himself) on multiple occasions and reassurances were given to the candidate that a job offer letter would be extended. One would think they can trust the words of a sr. executive (at least in the hiring process), if not anyone else. In the case for Accenture, think again. “Performance NOT Delivered.”