For some backstory: I have been floating around for the past 6 months doing contract gigs while working on my own projects. I am always looking for new sources of income, as contracting is unpredictable. Throughout this post I will refer to my handler as “Casey”, to protect the identity and gender of the recruiter, and within the blog post refer to Casey as a “him” just because. Hopefully nobody named Casey works at Stripe.
TLDR; The tech recruiting attitude all around is just terrible.
So a while ago I stumbled upon this post similar to this one on HN: Stripe is hiring for developer support. Part-time and remote (US times) welcome.
I have always heard great things about Stripe engineering, love the Stripe platform, and based on my schedule and lifestyle thought this would be a perfect fit for me.
Excited, I sent an e-mail soon after I saw the posting. I wrote a pretty decent e-mail showcasing my past projects and experience and thought for sure I would hear back. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear any response from them after waiting for a week. When it comes to interviewing, its always a “no-go” sign if people do not reply quickly, so I just thought nothing of it and moved on with other gigs.
Fast Forward 2 Months
Hi Justin!Thanks so much for reaching out, for your application materials, and for your patience! I’m very sorry for the significant delay on our end.I work on the recruiting team here at Stripe, and if you’d still be interested I’d love to set up a time to chat with you about the developer support role and to hear a bit more about your background. How does tomorrow or Monday look for you?Looking forward to connecting!Cheers,
Casey
First Red Flag: Wow. “Significant delay” is an understatement as it took 2 months to get an e-mail which suspiciously looks like a simple template. Not a touch of personality. Yes, these kinds of things annoy me. But no worries I thought. Shit happens. They are busy. They are a growing company. I can forgive this. Let’s see where this goes.
I write back to Casey, having a fast exchange of emails over the day, resulting in a scheduled call a few days later.
Enter the Screening Interview
We fired up Skype and chatted a bit about expectations, and general questions. After the call, Casey said he would send me some interview questions within the day that he wanted me to answer.
Second Red Flag: But Casey went cold again and never sent them. I politely e-mailed him a couple times order to get him to send them, and he did eventually, blaming Stripe a e-mail server problem (yeah, right). The e-mail was in a format like this.
Hey [FIRST NAME],Thanks so much for chatting with me about the Developer Support role![EMAIL TEMPLATE CONTENT]Cheers,
Casey
Now of course they replaced it with my info and I spared you the paragraphs of content, but it was clear it was just a template e-mail. I do not know why it took Casey so long to send a another simple template e-mail. Whatever.
They said I could have a few days to process the questions, but I got right to it and sent them back within 5 hours. I want to show my motivation, right?! Casey was cheerful, “thanks for the quick turnaround time! I’ll get back to you early next week.” he replied.
Awesome! We both sounded excited. They said they would look them over quickly, so I should know within the week if I get an on-site interview. Fun fun. But I’m sure you know where this is going…
Third Red Flag: Casey disappeared on me. He went dark, like way dark. I waited and waited. I did not hear back the next week, nor 1 week after that. Not a peep. I know how interviewing works and usually this is a bad sign but due to the two month delay prior I figured they could be busy. I made a note on my calendar to follow up at both 2 and 4 week intervals.
2 weeks in I sent another e-mail.
Hey [REDACTED].Haven’t heard back from you folks in the last 2 weeks. Guessing it’s a no go? Thanks,Justin
No reply. Wow. Ok. Common courtesy anyone?
4 weeks in, I sent another follow up e-mail, this time cc’ing someone else internal who I knew was helping with recruiting.
Hi [REDACTED]I have not heard back in 4 weeks now! I just wanted to make sure I didn’t slip through the cracks somehow!Thanks,Justin
That cc must have finally hit something because I got a reply the next afternoon from Casey. At this point, I was just looking forward for closure on the process not caring about the outcome. I opened the e-mail.
Here. Have Another Email Template
Hi Justin,Huge apologies for the delay on our end, and thank you so much for taking the time to complete the written project.Unfortunately, we’ve decided not to move forward with you for the [JOB REDACTED] at this time.Best of luck with everything. You’re clearly talented, and I have no doubt you’ll continue to do great things in the future.All the best,
Casey
That is it? After a lengthy 2 month back and forth this is what you send me? A rejection template? Uh, hello? Why didn’t you just send this to me the day you knew you didn’t want to continue?
I sent another e-mail asking for some more details, searching for at least some form of human connection. 24 hours has already passed with not even a “Sorry we can’t reveal that information.” I don’t expect to hear back from them.
Why should you care?
People get rejected all the time, and I get that. I myself have interviewed and rejected candidates, but the thing that annoys me off about this particular process was the lack of empathy, and obvious lack of consideration for the applicants time. Developers have feelings too! Stripe is not the first company to act this way, but I guess I just expected more from them just due to their status in Silicon Valley.
I had to hound for answers, I got cut out and led on, and all this for generic templates after months of waiting. What happened to people, you know, following through? Isn’t this the first thing they you learn as a recruiter, to respect time?
The Problem is Recruiters
The problem is bigger than Stripe though. The negative recruiting experience coincidently timed with other bad experiences I have been having with inbound recruiters who are constantly try to force me into phone calls, or them hiding position details as if it was some big secret unless I agreed to take the interview or a call with them. Putting this all together just got me so annoyed and drove me to write this post.
My message? The tech recruiting attitude all around is just terrible.
Now don’t get me wrong. I know some very talented and respected recruiters. My interviews at Airbnb and Meebo back in the day (2009) were memorable and I absolutely loved the recruiters. They were kind, punctual, and kept open communication throughout the entire interview process, and even went the extra mile to keep in touch afterwards. Their e-mails read like they were written by humans. However I feel as time has gone on, these recruiters are hidden gems, and the art of recruiting seems to have become lost. Instead of trying to get to know applicants and build real personal connections, recruiters resort to these very impersonal “fire-and-forget” methods. Maybe it’s because of LinkedIn? I don’t really know.
Pro-tip for recruiters out there — be human.
Overall, the entire experience was a grim reminder of why I absolutely hate dealing with recruiters.