I was victim of bad and inexperienced interview process and would love to be part of it as this company has a very good product with lots of potential for improvement and hope it will remain the same in future as work force here is somewhat not experienced which was shown in interview process.
I had one on phone with company recruiter which went fine and then with QA manager which was also good. QA manager just became manager directly from senior QA which was reflected in the interview though.
After this everything gone crazy. I was called for onsite and in email company recruiter mentioned some coding skills plus java which was not even part of job. I discussed this with recruiter and told her that QA manager mentioned that there is no automation requirement and there must be some be disconnect here. She contacted me and apologized for the confusion her email may have caused and mentioned/agreed that this position does not have any automation requirement and there will be none during interview.
Now the day I went for interview both interviewers were also disconnected and they do not know exact requirements of this position plus they were also not part of the team for which hiring was in progress. They both started asking automation related questions which surprised me and I told them that I was informed that there is no automation requirement for this position but they insist (specially second interviewer) that they will follow the process, this makes no sense as they were interviewing me for some thing which was not part of jobs but I continued and gave answers which in my view were decent keeping in view I was caught in this weird situation off guard.
After interview when I came out I met recruiting manager and I told him about this automation thing and he was also surprised and told me that he had a talk with hiring manger and there should not be any automation part involved. As per him both these interviewers are confused and disconnected and QA manager will talk to him. As per him interview and hiring process in guidewire is not mature and they are improving and getting to better side.
After the interview when I inquired about the status I was told that they cannot give me an offer due to this automation thing (which I still believe I have not done bad in it), I found it very disappointing as I spent lots of time on it and to have it ended this way due to something which is not even needed was not acceptable to me so I sent email to recruiter and told her that everything happened during my interview and my chat with recruiting manager and ask her to remove this blocker as I was really willing to work for this product. Today I got an email from her indicating that they talked to hiring manager and on the fly he changed the description and now this position requires automation which is ridiculous.
I wish I would have saved my time which I spent on this interview process.
Advise to management:
Your recruiters are good and professional but needs some maturity in hiring process plus workforce as things like these which I mentioned above is not acceptable.