Khan Academy SWE Recruiting - Extreme Unprofessionalism

lkezboa · 10時間前

Why would you do a company's project for 12 hours tho? That's too much of your time and 5 interviews? Yeah, I'll have been like "peace out" after the 2nd, unless they were back to back.

RSchaeffer · 9時間前

I had a similarly terrible experience with Khan for their internship. The first technical phone screen went well, but the second was disappointing. My interviewer called ten minutes late, and judging by the background noise, she was walking through an urban environment. She confirmed as much. I couldn't hear her, so she had to call back after walking to a quieter area. After we reconnected, she yelled and I asked what happened - she said that a car had nearly run her over, but instead hit a parked car next to her. Then she asked me a question, but couldn't clearly communicate what she wanted because she was using a term incorrectly. She got impatient with me. A few days later, I was subsequently rejected.

Such a shame, considering my first interviewer was so cool.

killersatan · 10時間前

Don't forget an interview process is two way, you're also interviewing the company and deciding if you want to work there. If that's how they're going to treat potential employees, I'd run.

cashmoneyhellos · 10時間前

Wtf...that's seriously fucked up. If you don't end up resolving the situation, make sure to at least put a very strongly worded review on their Glassdoor.

RecruitingThrowaway1 · 8時間前

I'm glad someone else is bringing this up. Made a throwaway for this thread.

I interviewed with Khan for their Director of Recruiting/Head of Recruiting/whatever-it-was role about 6 months ago (and, of course, passed) because once I heard about their process I was appalled. And I assume you likely spoke with the same SWE recruiter that would've been reporting to me and I was not impressed with anyone I spoke with over there either.

The fact that they wouldn't allow me to change their process because "it's worked and we've hired people" was what put me over the edge. Asking them for any flexibility seems super discouraged.

That said, please continue to surface this type of stuff. The only way it'll change is if they become more aware. My mind is blown that they manage to hire good talent at all given the length of the process and how unprofessional a lot of it seemed. Best of luck at your other role. Everything will work out fine.

DoctorSauce · 5時間前

Thank you for naming the company. I get so sick of people telling stories like this and then pussyfooting around when we ask who it was, like they're gonna be taken to court for libel.

UCSDhelp · 7時間前

I had the exact same thing happen for Two Sigma. It happens sometimes, especially for top companies where there's a ton of candidates.

For Khan Academy, I went through all the rounds and in my final round, we were discussing what potential teams were available to me (after I solved the 2 problems she gave me correctly). I got an automated rejection email the next day, with no response from the recruiter about my followups. KA's recruiting procedure does seem odd in that way -- I invested 2 months of my time and just got a one-line automated rejection. Brutal.

try-catch-finally · 6時間前

7 weeks is far too long for interview process.

my limit:

• 1 manager phone call to say 'howdy'

• 1 tech screen phone call / or face to face

• 1 onsite tech chat / whiteboard (if tech phone call)

• offer within 24 hours

anything more than that, they're not worth the effort.

(whole process should be complete within 1 week)

Draco1200 · 6時間前

I think you should consider it as a "crisis averted" situation. A company's recruiting process is a reflection on their business culture.

In case their recruiting process is ridiculous, then it's probably not the only set of ridiculous business processes, practices, or policies you would have to be involved with if hired.

That is to say an unreasonably-demanding hiring process that drags out excessively long and shows lack of consideration for the applicants suggests an unreasonably-demanding management that also likes dragging things out while you're in a bad place and potentially might have a lack of consideration for those hired.

chenboy3 · 6時間前

This happened for me too, I started the process in August (received Hackerrank then), and only got rejected after round 3 in early November (almost 3 months or so), they are such an extremely slow process that its really frustrating, especially with other pending deadlines w other companies

99991233 · 9時間前

That's crazy, 7 week interview process? They told me they like to finish in a month. I'm glad I got rejected pretty early.

Anyway, typical top SV company. They do this stuff (make you do a week-long project and put you through 1000 interviews) because people are willing to do this crap. I didn't find their rejection of me offensive, but it would have been nice for it to come from a real person after the time I put in instead of their automated "at this time, we have decided to pursue other candidates ... by the way, feel free to spend your free time volunteering for us!" I definitely won't be reapplying though.

throwawayhearphoens · 10時間前

Maybe the recruiter misunderstood your email and thought you were giving her an ultimatum? May be worth emailing her back and saying the other company was able to give you an extension and you'd like to continue on with your phone interviews.

Good luck, hopefully it works out for you.

techfronic · 10時間前

The process seems too long but I assume that they filled all their internship positions before you told them about your deadline instead of reacting to your deadline

KarlJay001 · 5時間前

What is so special about Khan?

I was going to apply for a job at one place, checked glassdoor and passed, they had a rep of 48 hours to answer the offer, the offer was subpar . Post this on glassdoor or somewhere else. Remember, they get away with this because we allow it to happen.

DontTrustOver25 · 9時間前

This shit really pisses me off. I get that tech companies are trying to make the hiring process "fair" so that people without formal experience or college degree can have a shot but to tease someone through a process like this is ridiculous. If they want to be that picky they should just have a really hard interview up front. Plus how is this even worth it on their end when the turnover rate in the tech industry is insanely high?

TheChubbyBunny · 4時間前

I think they're probably just disorganized. I passed their HR challenge, finished their project and submitted it along with my availability. A month later and they still hadn't contacted me back, so I contacted the recruiter, and it turns out they forgot about me.

csguy12 · 9時間前

Yup! I also interviewed with them and told them about another offer. Mine was for full time and I never got a response from the recruiter. Ended up taking the other offer because a former KA intern reached out and told me there was no way they would match it lol.

Mcnst · 3時間前

5 phone interviews for an internship, and that still wasn't enough? That's completely ridiculous. Lots of top companies have a total of about 5 interviews for a full-time job with the benefits and all. Internships are generally given after at most a couple of interviews.

EpicSolo · 8時間前

Exact same thing happened to me with Stripe.

JDiculous · 5時間前

Honestly I wouldn't even contact HR. They're not the real shot callers, and whoever the HR person is at KA is obviously incompetent and unprofessional. Email one of the engineers you hit it off with telling them about the situation, and they'll set it straight, ideally firing the HR person in the process. HR's job is to facilitate the process of hiring talent, not arbitrarily and unjustly impose their emotional tirades on qualified candidates

csthrowawawy123213 · 9時間前

Something similar happened to me with MS. I went through their behavioral interview and solved their brainteaser pretty easily but then I was rejected after telling them I had an upcoming deadline. They didn’t even ask me to ask for an extension. I wasn’t stuck in the interview process for 7 weeks but it really is silly for a company to reject for that reason.

SikhGamer · 8時間前

That's pretty horrifying, and downright atrocious. I would consider this a bullet dodged mate, no matter how much you wanted to work there.

Definitely leave Glassdoor review.

adfsadsafas1312 · 1時間前

Have you thought about the the idea that you aren't as good as you think you are? Maybe they aren't willing to take the chance on you, and were actually happy someone else found you adequate. When you push there is an equal and opposite force, but they happen to handle a larger magnitude than you.

uniqname99 · 1時間前

Khan Academy isn't big enough to require 5 interviews tbh. And the fact that it takes them 5 interviews is kinda ridiculous. Do it in 2, max 3 and get it over with

Howy_m · 8時間前

I'm going to be an outlier here and say that it's probably not the fault of recruiter or even the recruiter's boss.

Some orgs have TONS of bureaucracy to wade through for even something simple as extending a job offer. They probably were out of options. My guess is that this recruiter/recruitment team has experienced this situation has happened tons of times before. They saw your email as an ultimatum that they couldn't meet so they conceded and gave in.

Just my two cents from having done recruiting for orgs that suffer from too much red tape.

i-am-qix · 6時間前

Might be a moot point but is the recruiter (not the interviewing panel but the recruiter his/herself) part of KA, or is she external? If the latter, perhaps emailing KA directly and letting them know of such a shitty experience might be worthwhile (it might be worthwhile either way).

Usually CS companies try to have a great candidate experience and that is definitely not one. If it's an external recruiter it might be in the company's best interest to lose that agency.

cscqthrow123123 · 3時間前

Hey, I interned at KA this past year. I agree that the interview process is a bit long (possibly unnecessarily so), but I never experienced an unprofessionalism throughout the process. I can't be sure what happened to you exactly, but keep in mind that KA is very small, unlike most companies people on here talk about (I was one of ~10 interns). They might have filled up spots for next summer after telling you that you made it to the next round.

In any case, I don't think they rejected you because you had another offer, and in the end, it's better to not waste both of your times with additional interviews if either 1) they actually couldn't finish the interview process before your offer deadline or 2) they didn't have a position for you anymore.

throwawaynyc9001 · 9時間前

Let me ask you this: why do you want to work for a company that is willing to blow its candidates off like shit? If the interview is already this bad, I don't want to imagine what it is like once you are in. My recommendation would be to just take another offer that you have and forget about it.

If you are REALLY hellbent on chasing after this opportunity, you can either try to be super polite and try to resume the process, or you can carefully vent on the recruiter in hopes of resuming the process. Once upon a time I landed an interview with Palantir after accusing their HR of discrimination by age, because they sent out a mass e-mail saying that they won't consider anyone other than 4th year students (I was in 3rd year at the time). I rejected the interview so I can't tell you how effective it was, but their position went unfilled. (Man, I was a lot more impulsive in my younger days)

Edit: The Palantir interview was for an internship

The_Big_Mang · 9時間前

Email the recruiter's manager/boss. He/she is being lazy at their job and trying to cut you out even though you've proven a capable applicant. Recruiters get fucked for this a bunch and this one needs to.

Edit: I don't know what the downvotes are for, a classmate of mine got an internship at a top 4 after reporting their immediate recruiter's unprofessional-ism. They found them through LinkedIn. Low performers of any occupation need feedback.

crispytx · 7時間前

Maybe you weren't their first pick, and they didn't want you to lose your offer with the other company.

somethingconcon · 6時間前

Finding good interns is actually really hard. It is also very hard to find people dedicated enough to seriously want to show up everyday and put in the work. If someone told me to hurry up because they're interested in something else I'd probably tell them the same thing. I don't think that's extreme unprofessionalism. When you hire somebody in the tech field it's easy to forget you're hiring their skill set as well as who they are and how they will interact with the existing team etc. It might be quite possible there were indicators in the previous interviews that you might not be a good fit and brining up the other offer was all they needed to hear.

Devvils · 9時間前

As a manger, I see this differently. You gave them an ultimatum,and managers don't like ultimatums. However, the interview process seems absurd & I would move on.

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