My interview experience at Chewy was bad from the start and only got worse. After applying, the recruiter contacted me to set up a time to speak. Then he almost immediately reached back out to say that the position had been filled. What? I was surprised when he reached back out the following week to say the position was back open. Guess that should have been a red flag.
Had an initial 30-minute call with recruiter and then was subjected to six additional rounds of 45-minute interviews. Only had a call with the hiring manager, but then they strangely set up four Zoom interview calls with various people on the team. This was not a panel interview, but four separate interviews so it took up a lot of time over two days. After a week when I thought I would have an answer, the recruiter asked to set up yet another Zoom call with the director. It was obvious in this last interview that they weren’t sure about me, as evidenced by the detailed questions they continued asking. Instead of grilling candidates, how about having more of a dialog about what the job entails to see if it’s a match, or since it’s a writing role, ask the candidate to do a writing exercise? After seven rounds, the recruiter called to tell me that I didn’t get the job and they were “going in a different direction.” To have to prepare and go through that many rounds for a manager-level position seemed unprofessional. I was left feeling strange about the experience since I received no real feedback. Because they focused so heavily on behavioral questions, I never even got a real sense of the day-to-day job I would be doing. Chewy, please keep in mind that interviews are a two-way street and make better use of everyone’s time. I feel a lot of mine was wasted here.