Was interviewing with a company that had terrible Glassdoor reviews about their toxic culture. I moved to the 4th (and last) stage of the interview process, which was to go onsite and do a presentation (I’m not in engineering, FYI) A day before the onsite, the HR lady called me and was super excited, she pretty much sounded like the job was already a done deal, the whole team really liked me etc. She asked if I was excited and if I had any concerns, to which I brought up the bad Glassdoor reviews. She was clearly caught off guard and tried to give me some excuses but started rambling. The next day I went onsite, presented and honestly believe I did really well. Everyone in the room was nodding in agreement, I answered all questions with confidence, the deck looked really good. The next day I was called and she told me I didn’t get the job, and gave very vague reasons as to why. I wasn’t going to take the offer anyway as I have another one going through the references stage, and I want the other one a lot more. But I’m still so surprised by it, and wondering if they thought of me as a flight risk because I had already pointed out issues in the organization.
Why would you want to work for a company that doesn’t welcome someone who asked the tough questions? Consider it a bullet dodged.
What did you expect ? I was once interviewing for a Internal Transfer for a role that had bad WLB/Travel, asked the hiring manager and immediately realised it was bad. My 2cents... if you find anything about a company do your research and make ur decision, asking the hiring manager or recruiter is a bad idea
Learned that lesson now! Honestly I had already decided I wasn’t gonna take it if I got it. The only reason I wanted to get it, was so I could have numbers to compare with the other offer, but I still would have taken the other one for less money, purely based on the bad vibes I got from this company.
Name the company, OP
What would the logic of the company be, turning down a candidate because you brought up Glassdoor reviews? Can’t imagine why.
If they can’t deal with the negative thing (no wlb/no wfh/highly political culture) then they’re not a good “fit.”
Honestly, I don’t regret bringing it up. There were multiple reviews and they were all from the past few months. I wanted to hear what kind of explanation she was going to give for those, and she was clearly taken aback by my question. Maybe I should have waited for a potential offer and bring those up after, but I still would have brought it up. I have turned a blind eye to these types of red flags before and wasn’t about to do it again.
Congrats, you just avoided a shitty company. Next time ask these type of questions during intro calls to not waste time.
I didn’t look at the glassdoor reviews until I was on stage 3 of the process and figured I may as well go till the end since I had invested that much time. You’re totally right, moving forward whenever I’m job hunting again I’m going to do my due diligence and my research right at the beginning.
Could it just be you misread the environment? Maybe you thought you did really well but you didn't. Or maybe some other candidate did better. Who knows.
That could be it. The other one was a lot harder, and they still loved it and wanted to move forward to references. This one was much easier, and I honestly think they liked it, but it’s definitely possible that someone else did better. I’m just wondering if me bringing up my concerns raised a red flag and they didn’t want to take the risk.
Honestly it's hard to tell what was going on in their 🐹 wheels without insider knowledge. Good on you though. Good luck in your new role!