Recently had an interview with confluent (India), the interview topics/interviewers per se it was ok. But the process or decision making per se, its WORST than a mediocre startup. Even saw this in one of the linkedin post as well. Also in blind saw another comment about down-levelling ??!! My interviews went really well, solved all the problems without help from the interviewers, HM too had positive impression initially. Had to followup with recruiter for the feedback, recruiter never cared about updating. Got update that tech rounds were positive, moving to HM and collected pay details. The HM round went fine as well. But again the lazy ass recruiter didn't update me. Had to follow up. The recruiter came back after a week and said we are moving ahead with other candidates. Seriously, WTF? Apart from lethargic updates, I think the recruiter is not at the fault. It's the management, very poor in terms of setting up the process and decision making. I had high regard of confluent, but not any more. When everything went well, why rejecting at the very end without giving a reason? Sure, confluent can reject/hire anyone, but the feedback should be clear, since I've spent my time and shared all the pays docs etc. At least for that tell the candidates why you are rejecting them. Total waste of time with assignments, interviews. TC: 57L
Similar experience. Got confirmation that all feedbacks were positive and hiring committee has approved. After collecting documents, I haven't heard anything for last 20 days. Whenever i ping, the recruiter says it's in TC approval phase
Dude, i saw your other post and I thought you'll get it. But didn't expect this btw. Where are you joining, zeta?
Not yet decided. Declined zeta, have a couple of other offers
Can I dm you for your interview experience and the type of questions they ask ?
Sorry dude, I'm not using the app. Just the web. There were plenty of interview experience in blind and glassdoor.
This is a new trend it seems. Cloudera had called me a few months back. When i told salary expectations on intro call they politely backed out. Its good at least we didnt waste each others time.
Yeah, at least what cloudera did was good, instead of wasting time.
Getting an impression any unicorn when it sets up offices in India this becomes the case. Not sure if it’s the same in the US
There was nobody from India except the scheduling coordinator so looks like it's same in the US
Oh cool thanks for the info then. Was looking out for an opening there but guess have to think otherwise.
which role were you being hired for ? yoe?
Probably recruiter should have told you a bit about hiring process. After all positive rounds the feedback details goes to hiring committee. Generally this is completely different set of people. They take the decision of final hiring based on other factors like, overall fitment across the globe. Confluent has adopted this process from Google. I have seen people getting rejected by Google in HC decision.
swmonkey, adopting the HC like process is absolutely fine. But probably they need to adopt exactly what HC is doing as well. Regarding the HC rejecting, they reject only when they see a red flag such as, too easy interview, or important topic not being covered or important topic's solution is not optimal or exp to the level being hired (downlevel in this case) or if lean hire is given in an important round. But in my case everything was positive, not even neutral, but still got rejection. For which why not share the reason is what the gist of the post. With google, in any case, the candidate gets clear feedback on where things went wrong. Confluent's interview process is a mix of typical interviews (exploratory call, fitment call and ghosting) + google like process. Which not gonna help the candidate experience.
@confluent, does it mean that feedback has to be positive for all the rounds? What if I did well in 4 out of 5 round? How does HC decide? Do they take a look at the code of each packet Or just feedback from each interviewer?
I'm a new grad from one of the top tier institutes in India. Confluent India has an even worse university recruiting team. The presentation organized by the university recruiters across different colleges was a complete mess. They couldn't elaborate on how the compensation can increase manifolds if the company IPOs in the coming months. Also, there was no discussion on teams that operate from India. No discussion on the kind of work/tech a new-grad could get either. As a consequence, the placement cell of the most colleges gave Confluent India a much later slot for selecting students. By then, most of the top students got selected in other companies. They didn't even get a chance to interview at Confluent even though most of them cleared their fairly easy online assessment. The company handed a good CTC to absolute average students from no name departments (Not that I'm jealous of those students but there should be atleast some form of meritocracy at institutes of this level). The hiring bar was also very low.
Is that 70L ctc or annual tc? What’s the breakup?
23 base 5050 / 4 RSU units I'm really disappointed about how they handled the university recruiting. I like the company and its products but couldn't interview because of their inexperienced university recruiters. And the interviews were easy too
They have stopped hiring mid level in India right now. My application was put on hold after the screening round despite having positive feedback.
did they mention why this was done ?
They're not hiring lower level too. Only senior openings on website. I've a close friend working there. He said the lower/mid level hiring will not take off until next 6 months atleast. They are hiring leads and senior eng for their platform and observability teams
I too had a bad experience recently. They gave me a take home assignment for system design and scheduled a separate round for going over the design. I spent 2 days researching on the topic and created a detailed design doc and shared it with the team. But they rejected me based on the feedback for one of the earlier rounds. Such a huge waste of time
Many small companies seem to be doing this. Maybe they cannot afford to pay you or just want cheap. I have seen similar posts about Rubrik too. So its something maybe to also do with their pockets. Which is why in the intro call itself I tell recruiter my salary expectations and only if ok I proceed ahead. But then again many recruiters promise all shit to just get in leads and fill the hiring pipeline. As such they dont care much.
A recruiter from SAP reached out and we’re on the first call which went a bit longer than usual discussing the teams and the levels they’re looking for. The recruiter asked me my TC and I blurted out a rounded off number (I know it’s my fault). Recruiter politely said, “I don’t think SAP will be able to match your TC requirements for this role”. Felt sad but happy that I didn’t waste time with them.
Yes that is amazing. Has once happened with Uber too when I was a fresh grad. That they couldn’t beat my current offer and said if its okay to discontinue the process.