Before describing the interview process, I would like to mention that I have 1 year experience in IT Recruitment. I applied through job portals and the interview rounds consist of:
Round1: Reporting Manager which mostly consisted of non-technical questions.
Round2: Online Sourcing Test
Round3: HR Round where we discussed notice period and salary negotiations.
Round4: CEO Round which was more of an analytical interview. It was a very interesting round and the interaction was also very pleasant.
All rounds went smoothly and I got very good feedback as well. I thought I had scaled the mountain. The recruiter who had scheduled the interview, informed me there was a Leadership interview which would be conducted the next working day. Next day, firstly she sends a mail to go to a client location where the Account Delivery Head is present and further rounds would be conducted there. After a while, she backtracked and asked to come down to their office. On reaching their office, following rounds were conducted, nevertheless:
Round5: Account Delivery Lead which were mostly technical questions. Again got very good feedback. Meanwhile, the recruiter informed there will be 2 more rounds. I was literally flabbergasted.
Round6: Email to clients describing about 'my current organization' (And this is where I faltered).
When the recruiter informed me that I did not clear (because of the email testing round), left me in splits.
The entire recruitment process looks nothing short of absurdity. The job of a IT Recruiter at least at an entry level, to my understanding, is to source, screen resources and line them up for potential employment. In a day, the person might be screening 100s of resources, are they going to compile email for each and every of the 100 resources? This was the expectation as laid out by the so-called top HR company. Again, if such were their way of screening candidates, then they should had conducted the email-writing test along with the online sourcing test. What was the point of asking the next day and asking for a written test which has no relation to the job profile? If the 'email-writing' capability was so important to their organization, they could had conducted it on the 1st day and chucked me out. Moreover, my relevant experience is that of 1 year and I had mentioned the same in my resume and to the interviewing board. Are you expecting a Shakespeare of me in 1 year of experience?
This points in two directions: Either they were not confident onto their recruitment process or they were not serious about my candidature.
Thank God they rejected me because if I had got and accepted the offer, I would have had never been able to live upto their 'Alice in Wonderland' expectations. Have been job hunting since last 1 month, this is by far the worst organization I have been interviewed.