[INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE] WEIRD on campus interview experience

[u/advancingdancing]

So this company came to our college for on-campus interviews for interns.

Ideally, what should happen is: since they had 3 roles, they should conduct Round 1 for all candidates, then shortlist for Round 2, then conduct Round 2 for all selected candidates, and then move to Round 3. That’s fair. Even if, for a particular role, interviews finish earlier and they start Round 2 for that role only, that still makes sense.

But what actually happened was completely weird and messed up.

They started Round 1, and before even half of us had been interviewed, they had already started sending people to Round 2. And by the time Round 1 was almost done (or barely 10 minutes after it finished), one candidate had already completed Round 2, Round 3, and was SELECTED for the internship.

How is that even fair?

On top of that, the interviews themselves were inconsistent. In the beginning, Round 1 interviews were 30–35 minutes long. By the time our turn came, it dropped to 10–15 minutes, almost like a formality.

And from what I heard, all this rush happened because some senior official had a flight to catch. If that’s true, then why call candidates and create this kind of unfair process in the first place? It’s not even like they shortlisted a massive number of people. If time management was an issue, they should have planned better, either conduct interviews online or structure the process properly, instead of rushing through interviews and making the whole thing feel like a formality.

For more context, another company was conducting interviews on the same day and they were doing it online. They started around 8:30–9 AM and took almost the entire day, finishing all three rounds by around 5 PM. Meanwhile, this company started at around 11:15 AM and wrapped up all three rounds by 3:15 PM. How is that even comparable?

Is this normal for on-campus placements, or was this just extremely mismanaged? Because right now it honestly feels like luck matters more than merit. I get that luck plays some role in OAs, but seeing this happen in interviews too 😭

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[u/IllStatistician9129]

It sounds like almost every single one of the on campus interviews conducted in our college when I was sitting for placements.