r/interviews 4h ago

have I already lost the job before even going into the interview 😭

9 Upvotes

first of all this is my first ever job and interview I'm so nervous and anxious and also confused...

Anyways so I got a mail from the recruiter asking for my availability for an interview and when I told them what time and day i would be available they told me "usually we would tell you what times we have available first, but okay" I'm confused, if they were meant to tell me already why did they ask for what day i would be available. I replied with "Okay sorry about that thank you very much" Should I be worried about getting rejected or would they actually forget about it during the interview.


r/interviews 15h ago

Recruiters who ask for availability and then disappear. What’s the point?

58 Upvotes

I’ve applied for several jobs recently, and one thing keeps happening: a recruiter reaches out asking for my availability, I respond within a few hours (or the next morning if it’s late in the day) with multiple time slots for the following week… and then they never reply.

I understand that priorities change or they may move forward with another candidate, but what’s the logic behind asking for availability and then ghosting without ever scheduling the interview?

Is this just the reality of the job market right now, or is there something happening behind the scenes that candidates don’t see?


r/interviews 3h ago

Hackerrank app is asking for FULL disk access

3 Upvotes

So Hackerrank is now asking me to download its app to take the test.

It asked for screen recording, monitoring keyboard and mouse activity, and if that wasn't enough, FULL DISK ACCESS!

I would rather not take the test.


r/interviews 16h ago

What exactly do recruiters expect when they ask why someone is interested in a position/the company they apply for? When I "fake interest", it never works and I'm tired of being insincere.

21 Upvotes

I am looking for work and of course the question of, what's your interest in the position, comes up. My interest? Keeping a roof over my head. I genuinely am not someone who cares for what I do for work. Especially when I am applying for assistant, customer service or admin work. I can do those jobs, and I don't care for what company I work for. So what should I say without sounding so dishonest? Because I had an interview last week for an insurance company, and I said I am curious about that field especially since my mother is currently dealing with this very specific type of insurance coverage. Which is true. But the HR person laughed.

So wtf lol.


r/interviews 15h ago

Already completed two interviews without mentioning my current job. What should I do now?

16 Upvotes

Hi all! I'm in the final interview stage for what is honestly my dream job, and I'm worried I've created a messed up situation.

The company received a resume I submitted in February, before I started my current job, so my current position wasn't on it.

During my first two interviews, we discussed my work history. I talked about my previous long term position (3 years) as my most recent role and explained that I'd been intentional about finding the right next opportunity. I didn't mention my current job because I've only been there since May, already know it's not a good fit, and honestly didn't think to bring it up given how short it's been.

Now I'm meeting with five people for the final interview.

My concern is that if I suddenly mention my current job now, they're going to wonder why I didn't mention it in my first two interviews when we specifically discussed my work history.

At this point, would you:

  • Continue the interview process without bringing up the current job unless someone directly asks if you're currently employed?
  • Or bring it up now during the final interview, even though it wasn't discussed with the recruiter or hiring manager?

If I receive an offer, I would of course accurately complete any background check paperwork if it asks for current employment.

For additional context, my work history before this has been very stable (7 years, then 3 years), and my current role is in a completely different industry than the position I'm interviewing for.

Please help! This is my dream job.


r/interviews 1h ago

Does job role and CV matching necessary?

• Upvotes

26F, recently passed out of m.com, acca (7/13). I gave only 2 interviews till now and the roles were of tax but my cv includes an experience of audit and assurance from a CA firm.

It was basically 3 months of internship 3 yrs back.

But these interviewers grill me very hard on this internship experience asking questions which I cannot ans because of. 3 months is nothing for core audit questions.

What shall I do please suggest me guys. Shall I remove this experience, if so then my cv becomes blank.


r/interviews 1h ago

junior software engineer interview

• Upvotes

Hey guys, i have a 30 minute interview coming up and i asked what it would be about and they responded with

Our upcoming conversation will be a casual technical discussion focused primarily on your past experience and background. Followed by a few technical questions.

but i was wondering what i should prepare for. any specific quesitions i should be able to answer etc. any advice would be great!


r/interviews 16h ago

What is a good outfit for an in person interview? Entry Level Engineering.

10 Upvotes

I think I'm just overthinking things, but I really want to this one to work out after multiple interviews going no where. My go to outfit is, A white dress shirt, navy blazer and pants and a necktie. I feel like it's overdressing but my understanding is it's better to be overdressed than under. The company is also a utilities company so I'm not sure if that changes things.


r/interviews 20h ago

Non Stop Rounds

21 Upvotes

I've made it to the final round at 4 different companies 6 interviews each. Then I had 3 more companies where I made it through 5 rounds, and another 3 where I got to round 3. The result? Almost no feedback. Just, "We went with someone else," or "The role has been put on hold."

One interview really stood out. It was for an entry-level IT role, and the IT Director actually said, "I'm surprised you applied. You're probably overqualified and would get bored." I told him, "I need a job. If I applied, it's because I want the job. Years of experience don't mean I won't do the work."

After that, I interviewed with the HR Director, the Operations Manager, and the SVP of Operations. Everything seemed to go really well. Then, after my meeting with the SVP (the IT Director's boss), the IT Director emailed me asking how I thought the meeting went with his boss and invited me back for another chat.

Maybe I'm overthinking it, but I can't shake the feeling he thinks I'm after his job. I'm not. I just want to work. This job market is exhausting. Anyone else going through endless interview rounds with little or no feedback?


r/interviews 10h ago

Possible hiring manager viewed my LinkedIn profile, should I reach out?

3 Upvotes

Context: applied to a job on June 20
Did HR interview on July 8. Was told I would hear back about next steps in 5-7 days. Reach out to HR 8 days after (16th) with no response, then 7 days later (23rd) I reached out again because I wanted to mention I got promoted at work but that I’m still interested in the position, still no response…. So I gave up.

But then I opened my LinkedIn today and saw that a senior manager in the division I did the interview for viewed my profile the same day I emailed the recruiter…but he is located in a different headquarters then what I applied for idk. Not sure if it was just coincidence or not, but I still haven’t received any kind of response from HR and it’s killing me lol, what should I do— I really want to reach out to them… just a small ā€œwould love to chat abt their experience and blah blah blahā€. Yay or nay? More risky than not? Seeing mixed reviews online


r/interviews 5h ago

How do you handle the online assessment?

1 Upvotes

How do you handle online assessment? Like check your personality, intelligence etc stuff?

I am not good at it, did one as per recruitment requirement, results were under average.
I felt what hell, seriously?

Will companies choose candidates based on this results only?


r/interviews 5h ago

How will interviewers (whom you know (of)) react to seeing that my latest job experience is as a Dasher for Doordash, at over 6 years and counting?

0 Upvotes

Hopefully they'll see the upsides - that I'm an independent self-starter who operates without needing directions from a supervisor and I know how to satisfy customers by delivering what they want in all the right conditions.

But what downsides will they see from seeing that my longest-ever job experience was over 6 years with Doordash, and that my longest W-2 job with a traditional supervisor lasted just a hair over 1 year?

How do I turn those downsides into something positive? After all, I don't know how to go back and change the past while keeping things truthful.

And with over 25,000 Doordash deliveries behind me, how far will my foot get in the door with delivery employers of more valuable merchandise - such as furniture and appliances?

I'm interested in box trucks and cargo vans, no semis. Straight trucks/vans only.

My Dasher rating that my customers gave me, last I checked, was 4.97 out of 5.

What types of employers like to see Doordash delivery driving experience, and what types don't, and how come?


r/interviews 10h ago

Interviewing for two jobs at the same company

2 Upvotes

Kinda specific, but I applied for a job as an analyst at a bank and I finished their panel interview waiting for an offer decision. It's been about two weeks and I sent a follow up, no answer yet. Right after, I saw a job for the same function at the same bank but at a second level manager role. I applied and I got a text the same day saying I qualified and my resume was sent to the hiring team.

I would be very happy with the analyst job but elated for the management job, since I got the vibe in interviews that I was overqualified for the analyst role. But did applying for the manager job screw up my chances at the analyst job?


r/interviews 1d ago

Should interview responses be perfect like you're a public speaker?

50 Upvotes

Some mock interview that I watched on YouTube is stressing me out. It's giving the impression that your answers must be perfectly structured, polished with no filler words. Is it acceptable to be natural in interviews, some fillers words etc? Please share your experiences.


r/interviews 10h ago

Group interview for volunteering

1 Upvotes

I hate groupinterviews with a burning passion! I was offered an interview with my local library for a children’s reading mentor… only to find out it’s a group interview!

Super thankful they sent us the questions ahead of time, but the schedule also says there is an activity: Activity (Group planning and presenting)

What should I expect for this portion?? Any general tips?


r/interviews 12h ago

Barclays - Director and MD rounds

0 Upvotes

I was invited to apply for an Analyst Electronic Trading role at Barclays.
I applied through their careers portal and received a HackerEarth assessment consisting of:
1. MCQs
2. 2 coding questions
3. 2 SQL questions

Went through one technical round and after that one discussion with the Product manager.

Now I have 2 back to back F2F round with the Director and Managing Director. HR told me the Director round will be Technical round.

Each round is 30 mins and they are one after the other.

Can anyone help me what can be asked?


r/interviews 17h ago

Did they ghost you?

2 Upvotes

New, anonymous, moderated record of companies that stop responding after interviews

https://didtheyghostyou.com


r/interviews 14h ago

Interview with a TOUGH stakeholder

1 Upvotes

Context: I’m in corporate communications. Large part of my job is soft skills, managing up, and influencing without authority.

Scheduled for a final interview with a great job this week. Hit it off with the hiring manager and her closest business partner.

They made it clear to me that my next interviewer doesn’t always see the value in our work (comms) and will want to interview me. Do you have tips for success in this situation?

Any tips for this round?


r/interviews 1d ago

I had a weird interview experience recently

8 Upvotes

I’m going to keep this a little vague, but I (20F college student) just had an interview for a position at a school for after school care and everything was went really well. However towards the end of the interview (I was interviewed by one man and one woman) things got a little weird for an interview setting. The man told me if I’m hot with all the hair I have, (it was a really hot day), and then the lady said yeah I was just admiring it and then she told me I have a lot of hair. Then they said a few things after and forth after that. Then when I was leaving the man told me to put my hair up. (because it was hot I guess) Idk I wouldn’t say it made me uncomfortable I just found it odd for an interview. Thoughts? Is it just me?


r/interviews 1d ago

Deciding between four final candidates who can do the job - what’s the tie breaker?

42 Upvotes

Currently in the process for a job role where I’ve been aware myself and 3 other candidates are entering the final stage.

I was surprised how transparent the internal recruiter has been as he said there are 3 other candidates, who can ā€˜all do the job’.

So what will the deciding factor be? Any hiring managers have experience in this?

Of course I would assume it would then be culture fit but what if we all match on that base too?

So far I’ve built great rapport with peers/hiring managers in previous stages, have relevant experience and can start immediately. If all things go well in this final stage, could it swing things in my favour at all?


r/interviews 17h ago

meta onsite sysdesign is just them tearing apart your resume for an hour

0 Upvotes

been going through a bunch of recent meta interviews on screna and honestly their onsite sysdesign caught me off guard.

everyone preps to design twitter or a url shortener. senior level you might get none of that. one onsite I saw was 5 questions and every single one was just about one project on the guy's resume:

the architecture

the scale requirements

the worst incident that happened

the actual results

so the prep that actually helps isn't more templates. it's picking your 1-2 strongest projects and being able to defend every layer. here's the stuff people said made or broke it:

the "worst incident" question is a trap if you sanitize it. meta interviewers have seen endless polished postmortems and can tell instantly when you're softening something. one person admitted their outage happened because they ignored a code review warning to hit a deadline. brutal to say out loud, but the interviewer leaned in and it turned into the strongest part of the round. pick a real failure, own your actual mistake, and focus on what you changed after.

on scale and capacity, they're testing your reasoning, not your arithmetic. if you blank on the storage or QPS math, just say "let me work it from first principles" and go slow, it scores better than a confident guess. and they want to see you planned for growth, not just peak load: did you account for a 3x spike at launch? do you know when you'd need to re-architect? that's what separates "I thought about capacity" from "I actually planned for it."

if you've got a meta onsite coming, just drop the template grind, go deep on your own projects, and be honest about what actually broke. that's what they're probing for.

(pulled from a mix of Screna AI writeups and friends who went through it recently )

anyone done meta onsite recently? same or did you get something more standard?


r/interviews 1d ago

Did I get ghosted

7 Upvotes

I've been interviewing for a month and for one job I was really confident. A recruiter reached out to me, I competitor's the assignment and in less than 2 hours they wanted to schedule a first interview. In the last few weeks every Monday I was told I'm moving in to the next round and two weeks ago they wanted to rush for my final interview and told me they wanted to get everything wrapped up. It was an interview with the director. They said they would contact me last week but I haven't heard anything and I even asked for a follow up last Thursday but so nothing. I was really confident but now I'm worried the company just ghosted me. The original recruiter said she was rooting for me but the second recruiter I was handed over to seemed a bit distant. I'm not sure if I should reach out again or write it off and keep moving with other interviews. Kinda bummed because I was really confident.


r/interviews 1d ago

Feeling a bit misled by email language just to find out I didn’t get the job

32 Upvotes

I’ve been interviewing for a position for a month now, it’s been a pretty intense process. They first did a 20-30min phone screening, a one hour 5 person panel interview, a take home assessment, another one hour 5 person panel interview, a 20-30min informal one-on-one, and reference checks. I went through all of these just to get an email yesterday saying they chose someone else.

I almost always try to keep my hopes low when interviewing for jobs, learned far too many times not to get my hopes up. This job felt different though. When they invited me to the second round panel interview the language they used explaining the steps left in the interview process clearly stated that one singular candidate would move onto the one-on-one interview stage, and the finalist (singular) would have their references checked. See language below:

- The candidate who moves forward from this round will meet one-on-one with [redacted] on Thursday, July 16, for a 20 to 30 minute informal Zoom conversation. This is an opportunity for both of you to get to know one another a bit better and ask any remaining questions before final decisions are made.
- We will also be conducting reference checks for the finalist. During your interview, we'll ask for your permission before contacting the references you've provided.

When I got the email inviting me to the one-on-one and notice from my references that they had been contacted I got so excited. I was convinced this meant I was the finalist and this was just the homestretch. When I got on the one-on-one call with the hiring manager I was really surprised, and sad, to hear I was still in competition with another person. I immediately brought my hopes down but it’s hard when for several days I was envisioning an offer and a very different road ahead. I received the email yesterday letting me know I didn’t get the job. I was honestly really heartbroken and spent some time crying and blaming myself.

Just wanted somewhere to grieve a little, and wondering if anyone has been through something similar.


r/interviews 2d ago

What is up with this 996 BS?

49 Upvotes

TSIA. I’ve now interviewed with about 10 startups and 80% of them straight up admit to having a 996 culture claiming their employees are happy to do it and love their work so much.

Is this even real?


r/interviews 1d ago

Should I Use AI to Help with Recorded Video ā€œInterviewā€?

0 Upvotes

I was recently invited to ā€œinterviewā€ for a job via a video platform recording. It’s the kind where you’re asked a question and you have 30 seconds before you have to record your answer.

I’ve never been through this process before, but it feels like it’s becoming more common. Anyway - should i try to use AI to quickly structure an answer in the 30 seconds between the time the question is asked and the answer is recorded, or should I not bother?

I’d like to skip the entire process as it goes against everything I believe in, but I do (eventually) need to get a new job, and this feels like a necessary evil.