Throw away account here.
I had an I-cannot-believe-it experience with AWS hiring. A frustrating, if not humiliating, experience.
But let me put this first: this is only about one recruiter, not the whole hiring team, it may be unfair to infer that the whole team must behave badly because of what happened to me.
One month ago, I found a nice guy who works at Amazon AWS and was kind enough to refer me to AWS. I sent him my resume and the positions I was interested in, and he submitted. On July 20 I got an email from AWS confirming I was referred.
Soon a recruiter (let’s say name is WS) contacted me to set up a call, I swiftly replied and we finalized date and time.
Now some background about me: I’m not an US citizen and not in the US, yes an international candidate. This was clearly stated in my resume and in the email exchange with the recruiter WS. I don’t know (really not sure) whether this is the reason I was treated the way I experienced.
We agreed to meet on 9 AM US Central Time, July 31, using Chime (Amazon’s VoIP product). However, when the time arrived, WS did not show up, I waited 5 minutes and then sent an email, basically saying ‘hi are you available? I’m already here and I can wait for another 1 hour if you can join later’. Well… no message from WS and I nervously waited another 1 hour. Let me be clear, no any email or notification from WS before or after the Chime call.
About 8 hours later, WS replied an email ‘I’m so sorry, I was unable to get my Chime to work…’ Fine, bad things happened ( usually in this kind of case let’s blame IT guys :-P ). I immediately replied and proposed to meet next day, same time…. radio silence, no reply from WS.
I thought WS was busy (it seems AWS is in a busy hiring season) and I’d better not push too much, so I waited. That was a nervous process… not sure what happened, nor what I was supposed to do, what I could do…. One week passed, on Aug 7, I thought I don’t have to wait any more so I emailed WS asking ‘can we re-initiate our meeting?’ This time WS replied and we scheduled a Chime meeting on Aug 14, 9 AM. Ah…. had to wait another week to have the meeting, but fine, at least I got a meeting with WS. Finally it was Aug 14!!! Well… guess what, this time, WS no show again. Still, no email or anything from WS before or after the meeting, although I sent email reminding WS at 9:30, and called WS’ desk phone (no answer).
Frustrated, I emailed the AWS guy telling him what happened (well I hope I wasn’t like a crying baby to him ;-)). He said this was also unheard of, really out of line. He contacted WS asking about me and got an reply from WS with some explanation.
AWS guy’s inquire to WS might work. On Aug 17, WS emailed me saying let’s try something else. Since WS claimed Chime didn’t work, WS’ proposal was to use email for our conversation. That’s sort of strange but fine, no matter what this was an proposal to make things forward. My job application had been stagnated for weeks, I didn’t even have a chance to talk with the recruiter and that was supposed to be the 1st step of job seeking! Wlright, we agreed our (3rd time) meeting to be hold on Aug 21, 9 AM.
If you’re patient enough to read here, you may have known what happened by then. For the 3rd time, WS didn’t show up in the meeting. This time, I also sent reminding email, then called desk phone (no answer) and sent an SMS to WS’ mobile. Still, no any communication before and after the meeting from WS as of the moment now I’m writing this.
This is insane, was WS playing with me? Is this some kind of trick or hoax? The meeting date and time were set completed from WS’ agreement or proposal. Did WS do this intentionally, set up a meeting bu no show? How can you treat people like this? You don’t have to be nice to me, but at least being professional please?
As you can understand, what most stung and stunk is, you can reject me early and directly, that’s absolutely fine. But what happened, 3 times, is humiliating. Just tell me I’m not qualified, or we don’t fit or whatever, but don’t waste all my time and do the create-destroy hope cycle.
I think my AWS job seeking journey is stopped here, well actually it wasn’t even started.
PS. My AWS referral is really a great and nice guy who helped a lot. I understand HR department really is out of an engineer’s reach.