To the first point, of “I only need 20 minutes for this” that’s a classic get out of jail free card if they’ve decided you’re not a good fit or things aren’t going well. It manages your expectations and they can end the interview early.
replies(8):
1) About 35-40% of the interviewers started their questioning by saying "I will only need 20 minutes for this", while emphasizing it is an important leadership position that they are hiring for. So 20 minutes is all needed to identify "important, critical leaders"? What a strange thing to say - also a GREAT way to make candidates feel important and wanted!
2) There is significant shuffling of interviewers and schedules. One almost has to be on-call to be able to react quickly.
3) For an engineering manager position, I only interviewed with only technical person. To me it hints that Engineering MoM is not a very technical position.
4) Of all the people I spoke to, the hiring manager was the one I spoke the least with. The phone screen was one of the "I only need 20 minutes for this" calls. The other one was quite amusing, and is described below.
5) After the loop was done, the recruiter called me to congratulate me on passing, and started discussing details of the offer, including sending me a document described the equity program. Recruiter mentioned that the hiring manager would be calling me to discuss the position next.
6) SURPRISE INTERVIEW! I get a call from the hiring manager, he congratulates me on passing the loop, then as I prepare to ask questions about the role, he again says "I need to ask you two questions and need 20 minutes for this". Then proceeds to ask two random questions about platforms and process enforcement, then hangs up the call after I answer. Tells me he'd be calling in a week to discuss the position.
7) I get asked for references.
8) After passing the loop, have the recruiter discuss some details of the offer, have the hiring manager tell me they'd be calling me after a week, I get ghosted for about 3.5 weeks. References are contacted and feedback is confirmed positive.
9) I ping the recruiter to see when the offer is coming - it's not coming. They chose another candidate. I am fine with it, even after being offered verbally, but the ghosting part after wasting so much of my time seems almost intentional.
10) I call up a senior leader in the office I applied to, an acquaintance of mine. His answer: "don't come. It's a mess and a revolving door of people". I was shocked with the response.
11) I get called by the recruiter saying that another director saw my feedback and is very interested in talking to me and do an interview loop.
Guess I'm not joining, then.
I am ok with passing loops, being rejected, I've seen it all. But being ghosted after acceptance is a first. What a bizarre place this is.
I work at a company that grew more than 10x in under 2 years from a couple dozen engineers to hundreds. I personally interviewed well over 100 engineers. My time was valuable, but not so valuable that I couldn't spend an hour productively with each candidate. And certainly not by making them feel like it's an extended failure. On the super rare occasion that someone was gigantic "no", it's still possible to make the candidate feel valued.
One time, I had to shut down an interview cycle because a candidate was abusive to one of my reports. That's the only time I've cut a round short.
We spent the whole hour interview making zero progress on the task assigned. I kinda wish I had setup some kind of get-out-of-jail situation so that I could have saved everyone the time, but I sat though the whole hour just out of the embarrassment of ending things early.