Six interviews, then nothing
A recruiter, a CMO, and four more executives. Then no rejection, no update, nothing a person could use to close the loop.
Stories
An open archive of what candidates go through: the ghosting, the seven-stage processes, the take-home tests nobody read, the roles that were filled internally before the advert went up.
Some are found in public. Some are sent in. Contributors choose whether to be named.
Too good for the job, right for a worse one
They rang personally instead of using the scheduler. It was to say he was overqualified — then offer him something smaller in the same call.
120 applications, 8% callback
Six months, a hundred and twenty applications, and no reply at all to nearly half of them.
They rejected her, then posted her video
The assessment asked for an original video shot in-store. She was rejected on the first of May. Then she saw it on the company's own account.
Four rounds, five weeks, silence
Every stage professional, every signal positive. Then nothing.
The marketing internship in a basement
No website, no reviews, a basement office, and fifteen other people her age waiting in the lobby.
The recruiter who lied to get him in the room
The job was permanent only. The pitch suggested it might not be. The recruiter was betting that showing up would change his mind.
We said $30 because that's what we used to pay
The posted wage was not a mistake, and not out of date. The interviewer explained, out loud, that it was bait.
Ten hours for a four-hour task, then nothing
Told it would take about four hours. It took ten, across two days. Then two weeks of the silence they'd asked him to wait through — and more after that.
The company that said it pays candidates, and didn't
Fifteen-odd requirements sold as a couple of hours, which took days — from an employer that had publicly stated it pays for every stage regardless of outcome.
A plan they could implement without hiring him
Six or seven hours of unpaid work producing a full performance-improvement plan — code review, staff conversations, engineering changes.
He capped it at two hours, as instructed
The brief said spend no more than two hours. He spent two hours, flagged what he'd left out, and was rejected for leaving it out.
Three hours, six endpoints, and a frontend from scratch
A recruiter sent a zip file with a three-hour budget for work that could not be done in three hours. He worked out what the exercise was really measuring.