I entered the conversion interview through an internship. During the internship interview, I was interviewed by an engineer and an engineering manager, both of whom were very professional. I passed the interview and started my internship at the company. After the internship ended, I had interviews with engineering managers from other teams and finally a director-level interview.
During the internship, I received excellent feedback and had a great relationship with everyone on the team. They all recognized and appreciated my work. However, the final interview was with a director — an Indian woman whose background was not particularly impressive and who hadn’t been hands-on with technology for many years. She only asked very generic behavioral questions. What was shocking was that she had no idea which team I interned with or what work I had done. She was a director completely unrelated to my business line. After asking a few superficial questions, I received a rejection about a week later.
I was deeply disappointed and began to question the management at Mercari. While the employees at the lower levels are all outstanding, the management seems extremely disorganized. They had someone who knew nothing about me conduct the final interview, ask a few irrelevant questions, and then reject me without providing any reason.
I hope every intern aiming for a full-time position learns from this: just because you’ve reached the conversion interview doesn’t mean you’ll receive an offer.
