Rejected in the fourth interview round, citing insufficient years of experience [closed]

Question

I have been interviewing with a very prominent software company, having completed one HR and two technical rounds (one with the team's manager) before. In the fourth round (coding round) I did very well on the challenge and answered all questions barring one (well, I answered half of that too). He later went on to say that I have only two years of experience and they wanted more. And kept the call saying "That's it from my side".

This is very frustrating since a month of effort and time has gone into this. And looking at a candidate's experience is something that should have been seen before. Clearly not in the fourth round.

Is it ethical (for lack of a better word) for someone to speak to the manager when in similar situation? If yes, how should one approach?

Answer 1

Why didn't they say you didn't have enough experience earlier in the process?

Because it isn't true.

You had enough experience going in, but you didn't get the job. Now they need to give you a reason why they chose the successful candidate and not you, and that candidate has more experience than you. So now, compared to the successful candidate, you don't have enough experience.

Of course, that may have nothing to do with why they really chose the other candidate. It's post-hoc justifications all the way down. As such neither side has anything to gain from further discussion.

Answer 2

I would not say it is unethical, but you will not gain anything from it by speaking to the manager.

As @Kozaky mentioned, it is possible they want their average years of experience to be higher. Is it smart? Probably not, since experience does not necessarily equal competence.

Also, though, is the fact that you may want to apply at this company in the future, and complaining about something like this will likely put you on a "blacklist" of some sort.

Understandly, it is not fair to you. However, there is little recourse in this matter. Get your frustration out, and move on. That's the best you can do.

Answer 3

The thing you need to bear in mind is that, in reality, there are basically three reasons for rejecting a candidate you've interviewed:

1. you were good enough to hire but, sorry, they liked another candidate better;
2. you weren't good enough to hire;
3. they discovered that terrible thing you were trying to hide from them.

Any other reason they give you is really one of those in disguise. Typically they want to give something that objectively distinguishes you from the person they did hire. So "We wanted more experience" most likely means "We liked another candidate better, and they had more experience than you." Or, if the ad said they wanted somebody with more than two years' experience, it might mean "We thought you might be good enough to hire even though you didn't have the experience we said we wanted but, after interviewing you, we realised you weren't" (reason 2).

You can be fairly sure that it's not that they interviewed your four times and then noticed "Oops, not enough experience. Darn, we shoulda spotted that earlier!" There's nothing to be gained by talking to the company about this. They've made their decision and they've given you the only justification for it that they ever will.

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Falco has pointed out a fourth possible reason, in the comments: due to a change in circumstances, the company has decided not to hire anyone at all.

Answer 4

Hindsight is always 20/20

The right time to bring up your concern over lack of communication was to do it right after they told you that "you have only 2 years of experience and we want more."

Your response should have been:

My apologies if I seem frustrated but could you tell me why I wasn't disqualified sooner? It has been a fairly large time and energy investment on my part to make it through the interviews thus far. If my resume misled you in any way then please let me know because I would like to fix it ASAP.

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You can try to call the recruiter or hiring manager and express your concern calmly and politely as I did above.

It is very unlikely that you will get the job for expressing your concerns but at least they may provide some closure such as:

Our apologies, let us clarify by explaining XYZ and why our reasoning was worded in that way.

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Or maybe you did bad enough in previous rounds so they are saying that more experience will help you to do better in the future.

Answer 5

No, it wouldn't be unethical, but it would be a total waste of time.

This was a jerk move on their part, and IMO, they screened themselves out of the running. Don't waste a moment's time with them. The interview is the very best you will ever see the company. If they're bad in the interview, they will be worse to work for.

Answer 6

As many have already pointed out - it isn't necessarily 'unethical,' but you don't stand to gain much from having that conversation. You got a reason for the decision (even if that answer is vague or unsatisfactory) which is more than most applicants get.

That being said, this is an incredibly frustrating situation (speaking from experience).

If I may offer some unsolicited advice: I think you should view this as their loss. It can be difficult to see the positive side of this situation in light of the outcome, but you should celebrate the fact that you did very well in the interview and lost the opportunity for reasons beyond your present control.

Sometimes hiring managers have a change of heart down the road (especially if the 'experienced' candidate isn't working out) and this company may in fact reach out to you months or even years later (perhaps for a different, yet similar role). If you're doing this well in interviews you will definitely have a job by then, but they may present you with a really attractive offer. If that does happen, you need to consider why they turned you down in the first place. Don't get caught up working with a group of people that value perception over reality!

It's possible you dodged a bullet here. Take a few days off from the job hunt if you can afford it and realign yourself. Best of luck!

Answer 7

Like others have said, it's best to move on. Pretend it never happened, and get it out of your system right away. Forget it, clear your mind, and move onto the next (better) one, but do keep in mind that it could happen again, too, so keep your mind prepared.

Maybe it'll make you feel better knowing my story (and I also need to get this out - because it hurts). I was out of work for 4+ months (trusted someone, and they broke my trust very badly..), and wife was 6-7 months pregnant. Had applied to countless places, but even with years of experience, Masters degree, and many personal projects, usual reply (if I got any) was "background doesn't match".

Finally got skype interview setup for a company in NY. Did great in that. Got 2nd skype setup, did great in that, and got to coding challenge. Started coding at 7am in the morning. Had to take wife to doc the same day, so I took my laptop to hospital, sat on floor in hallway and coded the exercise. It was a very large coding exercise, and ended up working on it, and finishing at 12:30 that night (yup, night!) They reviewed it, loved it, and yet another skype with engineers was setup, and they approved/liked solution. Got invited for in-person at their office in NY. Paid for hotel+flight with my money (got reimbursed, see below). Flew 5 hours to NY. Spent night in hotel, and had in-person interview next day. 5-6 people took interview one after another. Engineers and I just clicked - they were super happy (not me saying, but they told me that)! Founder of company asked technical algorithm questions - did very well in that. All that took 5 hours. Came back 5 hour flight. And waited... waited... waited... They said, I'd hear back in 2 days. After 2 weeks, I got a "no". To date, I have no idea why, especially when the email stated something like "I fit perfectly in the culture". I asked to be reimbursed, and it took them 1 month since my return.

It's been months since this, and recently one of their HR person connected me to an outside hiring agency... That to me seems very fishy as well.

That company is a big NO on my list now.

I do have a job now, so at least I'm happy. But yes, these things happen. People say, "don't burn bridges". For people who engage in these types of behaviors, do I want to keep a bridge? Nope.

Answer 8

It's not unethical, in the legal sense, as in you really have no method of recourse against them for any reason. You also probably shouldn't complain to the manager, as it's probably not their call as to what the company is hiring for, especially if it's a large company (large companies often have "hiring pools" from which managers can take candidates they like; it's very rare that a manager in a large company will specifically hire for a specific position, at least not until a placement stage which happens after the offer stage).

If you would like to complain to someone, you should complain to the recruiter who introduced you to that company, especially if that recruiter is a 3rd party recruiter (not someone internal to the company). Speaking specifically about 3rd party recruiters, it's important to let a 3rd party recruiter know for 2 reasons:

1) Recruiters get paid when candidates get placed, usually as a percentage of that candidate's salary. If the recruiter does a bunch of work but the company is stingy and won't let the recruiter place a candidate, then the recruiter is wasting their time. Recruiters don't want to waste their time, so they should be made to know if the company is being stingy.

2) Client behaviour can impact a recruiter's image. For example, if I talk to a recruiter and tell them my background is Java backend, and they send me to a company who wants to hire Ruby frontend developers, I'm going to be pretty mad at that recruiter for wasting my time sending me to a company that wasn't a good fit. This is a simple obvious example, but the same holds in your case; the recruiter sent you to a company that was not looking for someone with your qualifications. This looks bad on the recruiter. Now, hopefully, the recruiter didn't do this maliciously, and it's likely there was a simple miscommunication between the recruiter and the company. However, that doesn't change the fact that this is what they did, and this looks bad on their image as a recruiter. If the recruiter wants to maintain their image and reputation, they should not deal with companies who miscommunicate their expectations and waste applicants' time (and recruiter's time placing those applicants!). So once again, the recruiter should be made to know if this is going on.

Internal recruiters have neither of these concerns, so if you're dealing with an internal recruiter these statements do not apply. As such, you can do whatever you feel is right.

The rest more or less depends on how much you would like to pursue this company in the future. Do you believe this is a miscommunication, or do you believe this is a symptom of a systemic problem in the company as a whole? If you believe you would like to pursue this company in the future, then you should probably just drop it; you failed the interview for whatever reason (in this case by no fault of your own, just to be clear; the company is 100% in the wrong here, but that doesn't change the fact that you didn't get an offer), try again next time. If you feel like this has left such a bad taste in your mouth that you are no longer interested in the company, then feel free to say whatever you like to whomever you like; if you consider their bridge burned with you, then you have no problem burning your bridge with them.

In either case, I would write a review on a job posting review board (if the company is North American then my recommendation would be Glassdoor; if not, then use whatever is popular for your locale) detailing your experience. Most of these boards are anonymous so the company wouldn't know it was you, and at the same time you will be warning people of these sorts of experiences. I know that I personally look up every company I interview with on Glassdoor before I consider applying/interviewing there, so as much as you may think "nobody reads that crap what am I really wasting my time on?", there are people who really do read it and listen to what people say there.

Answer 9

It is happened to me as well. Doing many interviews for a digital marketing agency after 4 interviews they told me that the Ceo did not agree to hire me because I did not have enough work experience although I rocked in the interviews.

I think you have just to accept it, in this crazy job market anything can happen. What I also learned thanks to another "unfair" experience is about not given anything for grant and keep interviewing with as much as companies you can as long as you have in your hand a goddamn contract.

Especially for new graduate (as me) never had big expectations even though you did the best interview of your life.

Peppe

Answer 10

I wouldn't describe it as unethical but it's certainly not advisable. I think you just have to move on from the bad experience by applying for jobs elsewhere. There's nothing to gain from pursuing with that job as the manager has already stated you don't have the years of experience they are looking for so it's a dead end.

I do sympathise, however, as it is incompetent of them to take four interview stages to decide this. Surely they could've just rejected your application due to lack of years experience than to waste your time by inviting you to not one but four interview stages.

Edit: Just realised I've almost repeated what Sagar has said apart from the second paragraph. I'll leave this answer here unless an admin wants to delete it.

Answer 11

Beyond the sentiments above (ethical but what will you gain?), you mention this is a prominent company.

This is very possibly one of the standard canned answers that legal has defined as a reason to legitimately overlook a candidate. If they toe the company line with such a generic answer, it's easy for every level to stick to the story and any lawsuit stands less of a chance.

About the only angle I see following up benefitting you is if you somehow would catch them in the lie and learn the winning candidate was less experienced and there were some grounds for some type of actionable discrimination. But beyond theoretically possible, I see little way you'd ever prove any of it.

Answer 12

Is it ethical? I don't see any reason why it would be unethical. But the more important question is, Is it likely to be productive? And the answer to that is, Almost certainly not.

I'm not sure if you mean to call the interviewer to complain or to call his boss. But either way, what do you expect would happen? Do you think you will complain that the interview was unfair and wasted your time, and they'll reply, "Zounds! You're right! We're going to offer you the job after all." No. Most likely they'd shrug and say, "Oh, sorry." At best, you'll just waste more of your time. At worst, you'll annoy them and ruin any chance of getting a job with this company in the future.

And bear in mind, when a company rejects you, the reason they give may or may not be the real reason. When they reject you, they don't want to insult yo. They're not going to say, "We rejected you because we concluded you're an idiot" or "because you smell bad". And they don't want to get into an argument. Often the real reason is vague, like "I have a bad feeling about this guy" or "I don't think he'd fit in our company". But if they say that, then you might say, "Well what's wrong with me? Why don't you think I'd be a good employee?" and they don't have a concrete answer. (And of course if they rejected you for a reason that isn't legal in your jurisdiction, they don't like your race or you let slip something about your politics or religion or whatever that offends them, they're not going to admit that and give you grounds for a lawsuit.) "You don't have enough experience" is simple, doesn't sound nasty, and sounds objective.

Maybe you thought the interviews went very well but they didn't. Yes, getting rejected when you thought the interview went well is very frustrating. But there's little you can do but try to learn from the experience. Think over the interview and see if you can think of things you did wrong. Did you stumble over answers? Say things that in retrospect were not good answers? If so, now you know better for next time. If you can't think of anything you fumbled, well, it was good practice.

Just move on. You gain nothing by complaining except prolonging the aggravation.

Answer 13

After being rejected, you can ask to meet the manager you had contact with to discuss the interviews. The worst that can happen is they say no. However, your rejection for this job is final, and to have a chance at talking to him you should make clear that you understand that and you're not trying to change that result. Treat it like networking.

Personally I have done so in the past, when an interview at a company didn't work out I asked the director if I could just come by and talk to him about his views on the job market in town and his opinion of my skills. It was a very useful discussion to me and also to them, as a few years later I gave someone a tip to apply there who was a perfect fit and who still works there.

Nowadays I would connect to the team lead on LinkedIn, and if he accepts send a message with something like "Hey, shame it didn't work out but so it goes. I was thinking, could I maybe come by for a cup of coffee one of these days, to get some clarity on how my interviewing went?".

And then who knows.

Answer 14

It is absolutely inappropriate for you to follow through with what you have asked about in the tone you have taken for your question

Do not contact them and cry about the "time you wasted." If you follow through with this, you would just be confirming their final statement to you that you just do not have the experience they are looking for.

DO

• Reach out to them.
• Address each of them by name.
• Thank them for their consideration.
• Articulate to them that you were hopeful that you would have been the one chosen, state thoughtful 'whys' that illustrate that you were paying attention to them during your 4 interview rounds, and express your disappointment that you will have to wait to work with them
• Professionally implore them to involve you in their thoughts for any future opportunities that may come available.

Be Professional or Be Unemployed

All employment openings are not created equal

You never communicated what type of role this process was for.

There are three fundamental types of employment openings:

• Filling of Vacant/Soon to be Vacant Roles
• Team Expansions
• Need Warm Bodies

When a role is being filled, there are almost always many more specific requirements that a company will be looking for in a candidate. Usually, no one matches perfectly unless a referral is involved and candidates match different subsets of the requirements in different subtle ways.

When a role is being created, the requirements are much more usually set by market conditions rather than arbitrary internal perception of need. For instance, a manager could have read an article about some new technology and they want to spend some of their budget finding someone that can introduce that technology to the team. Or, the departmental FY budget has been set higher than originally anticipated and a manager wants to plow the money back into acquiring talent for the future. There are lots of anecdotal reasons why a company may expand. These are but a couple that immediately come to mind.

What your continued progression through their (lengthy) interviewing process tells you

is that you seemed to be -in their minds at least- consistently above other candidates which were like you; your positive qualities matched their strengths and you were deemed the stronger choice. The other candidates which progressed along with you almost certainly had some skills which overlapped with your own (you were interviewing for the same role, after all) but their experience ticked different boxes on the checklist than yours did.

When it comes time to choose who progresses through interview rounds, there is almost always (except in the most bureaucratic of circumstances) flexibility on the number of people who are allowed to progress and unanimous -or even majority- consent is very rarely required. Progression usually follows simple "patronage" rules where someone in the decision making process considers you worthy of a more detailed look by the team as a whole.

When it comes time to choose the candidate who is deemed the best fit, all of the acquired candidate data is prepared, juxtaposed, compared, contrasted, weighed, and measured.

Then the hiring manager usually consults with the team the candidate will be joining for their opinion on who they believe will be the best fit, then usually makes a unilateral decision.

• If the intention is to fill a vacant role, the candidate with the least perceived risk always wins.
• If the intention is to expand a new role, the candidate with the highest perceived potential always wins.

This is business.

Act like it.

Answer 15

Be flattered that you got the interview in the first place knowing you didn't meet all of the criteria. You went in with your eyes open. Be proud that you went so far in the interview person before your inexperience showed. You should go into future Interviews with great confidence.

They told you the truth, that in the end you couldn't overcome your lack experience at this time.

Send a gracious thank you letter for the opportunity to the company. Your recruiter did you a favor at the expense of their time.

I have a son going through the same interview experiences. He has less than 2 years experience and is thankful for all opportunities. I myself got my first job via a recruiter just out of school with a master's degree and only part-time experience at a prominent company. I never would have had the opportunity if they didn't take a chance on me even without the experience required.