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I have been interviewing with an Indian IT company (I myself am European; it is a remote position). My initial interview with HR was two weeks ago, then followed a very basic technical interview last week. All other contact was by email so far.

Yesterday I received a text message from an unknown person in HR who said they wanted to meet that same day, but I didn't see the message in time and today I received text messages on two different IM apps from my initial contact, as well as a WhatsApp call (which I did not answer) and an email. We now scheduled an appointment next week but they already told me they want to make an offer then.

Originally I was supposed to have a more in-depth technical interview besides the very basic one, but that was cancelled. The one technical interview I had was so basic that it seems people much below the level they are recruiting could pass, entirely on-script, and relatively short (30–45 min.). This is very different from the experience I had with some European companies, where technical interviews would easily last over the hour, go off-script with both of us sharing previous projects and more people would be involved in the whole process.

Am I right that this company is coming across a little desperate, and should I be worried if they're hiring people without making sure that they meet their requirements? Or may this be (in part) a cultural difference? What can I do during the talk next week to find out more? Would it be OK to put these considerations to them in more or less the same way as I wrote them down here?

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    I'd recommend that you search and read a number of other posts here with the india tag. They seem to have very different practices towards managing knowledge workers there.
    – Daniel R. Collins
    Jul 23, 2021 at 14:03
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    I get this so often with Indian recruiters that I, unfortunately, refuse to answer their calls or take jobs from them. Most often their job post will be also being offered by other recruiters who will be more professional. Some of them, they've called me, texted me, left voice mails, messaged me on linked in, and emailed me, all within 5 minutes. They're desperate because them or their families in India really need / want the money, and recruiting commissions are big money.
    – schizoid04
    Jul 23, 2021 at 23:37

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You shouldn't say "Why are you desperate to hire me?" but it seems like you could ask more indirect questions. There are a few scenarios for a company being desperate to hire: maybe a lot of people are leaving, they have a lot of new projects coming up/already started, or they have big expansion plans. Some good, some bad reasons.

You could ask why they're so keen without directly asking, e.g. by asking why they're looking to hire, what their recent history and plans are, whether they're expanding or replacing someone, what their staffing levels are, how many people they're recruiting. It's also legitimate to be interested in things like their business model and their sources of income.

Rather than ask if they're desperate because they've got problems with churn or everyone leaving, you could ask how long the people on your future team have been working there and try and get a sense of who they are - it's legitimate to want to know a bit about who you're working with.

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Not necessarily a red flag. If they've recognized that you're more technically skilled than their interview team, they might feel there's no point in further interviews and they should just jump to the hiring process. This is a fairly good sign; if you have confidence that you're a fit for the position, you should also have confidence that the interviewers would recognize that you're in demand.

Of course if you really are more skilled than their interview team then it does mean that they may expect you to demonstrate leadership on one or more projects as soon as you join. So you may need to be prepared for that. You're probably right that there are some red flags, but as long as they're willing to treat you well as you help solve them, that's not necessarily a problem for you.

I'm not sure if it's a culture thing or not as I've only once had a technical interview in Australia and never for more than 20 minutes. Remember, they can fire you just as quickly as they hired you during the first few weeks. In many cases the first two weeks are the real interview.

I wouldn't mention any of this to them. If you ask them why they're not more worried about hiring you, they're going to ask you why they should be worried about hiring you. That's not going to be a career-positive conversation for you. There's no way it can make things better and many ways that it can make things worse.

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