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A few weeks ago I started to look for new opportunities, and found a job offer in a subsidiary of a S&P 500 company, which looked really interesting.

After applying, I got an email from the manager to schedule a first phone interview. The interview went well, although it was the bare minimum: he introduced the context, I walked him through my resume, asked me why I wanted to change, the length of my notice and my salary expectations, and after 30 minutes we were done. He didn't really try to validate any of my technical skills (we're talking about a software engineering/devops role, and having been on the other side as a recruiter, for me this is a first red flag to not validate the applicant skills and blindly trust what's on the resume).

At the end when I asked him what were the next steps of their recruitment process, he wasn't sure and told me : "I'll have to check if we can schedule an on-site interview".

And apparently I aced the interview so well that yesterday, I got an email from him congratulating me that I had the job and they would send me an offer soon.

Honestly this is the first time I get a job so easily, and I'm confused because I really didn't expect that, especially from a large corporate and for a senior posistion, not a few months internship.

So, what would be the smart thing to do here? Is it acceptable to request an onsite interview, for example with HR, ask to meet the team, etc? Another thing that worries me is when he said that there were 3 open position in the team, and it didn't seem that they were expanding the team, so I was thinking maybe ask to meet the manager's manager to try to better understand what's going on.

EDIT (2 years later): I saw that this question was read 1k times! And I realized that I never completed how this story ended. Well, a few weeks after the mail assuring me that I would get an offer soon, I got another e-mail from the hiring manager to apologize because all recruitements in his department were temporarily freezed and so I wouldn't get an offer now, but assuring me that my profile interested them and he would get in touch.

Finally, 3 months later, he contacted me back saying that the freeze was about to end and asking me if I was still interested, and proposing an interview with his director. I politely replied that I wasn't looking for new opportunities anymore :-)

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    Maybe they are having a hard time finding competent personnel and they are just eager to get you onboard.
    – Al rl
    Commented Apr 24, 2022 at 16:24
  • I've had two positions that were essentially "one phone call" deals. One was my favourite job in my career, the other was decent that I only left to join a dream company.
    – Juha Untinen
    Commented Apr 24, 2022 at 16:58
  • I would be puzzled too if I were you. Large companies usually have 5 or 6 rounds of tough Leetcode style coding interviews for a senior position. You can ask the manager again about the normal interview process for this position such as "How many interviews usually do you have for this position?" and "Why am I so fortunate to be selected after only 1 interview?". Is it possible that the offer was mistakenly sent to you while it was meant for someone else ? In the end, if you really love this job and this company, you should take the offer ASAP.
    – Job_September_2020
    Commented Apr 24, 2022 at 19:19
  • Does your resume contain any links to your work like a portfolio, GitHub, etc.? If you actually already gave them an opportunity to see your work then that might explain them skipping the technical interview. (Of course, they still should have explained this, which makes me think Job_September is more likely correct that you got an email from someone farther along in the process.)
    – BSMP
    Commented Apr 24, 2022 at 20:17
  • @Job_September_2020, I don't think it can be a mistake since the last mail telling me that I would get an offer was not from an automated system, but from the hiring manager himself.
    – piwai
    Commented Apr 25, 2022 at 7:43

4 Answers 4

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I'm not sure if you should be worried, but there are definitely risks.

By only having a brief conversation with the hiring manager, you know nothing about the other people you would be working with on a day-to-day basis. Are they people that you'd get along with? Can you work with them for ~8 hours a day, ~5 days a week? Are they technically skilled and people that I can learn from? There's no way to assess anything about the people you'd be working with unless you had further interviews.

Since you didn't go through a technical screening or interview, it's also possible that other people didn't either. This could mean several things. One possibility is that the company is very quick to fire people who don't live up to their standards on the job. Another possibility is that they don't have a system to evaluate the technical competence of their people. Both present risks for long-term stability and success at the organization.

Unless I was in a situation where I had no job, I needed one quickly, and this was the only opportunity that was coming along, I'd be hard-pressed to take a job without at least having conversations with the other people on the team, if not a skip-level interview. Interviews go both ways - the company evaluates you and you evaluate the company. I wouldn't be able to evaluate the team and company well in a single 30 minute call with the hiring manager.

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  • Yes. Interviews are a two-way street. They decided they'd learned enough about you to make an offer, well, great, though one wonders if they're this lacking in thoroughness with every hire, and what that might mean if so. But have you learned enough to know if you want to work for them? If not, one short call is not enough.
    – BittermanAndy
    Commented Apr 24, 2022 at 17:43
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    Not only do you not know much about them, they don't know much about you either. I mean, I'd love to think that I'm so awesome that my brilliance is obvious after a short phone call, but the reality is that's probably not the case. I'd at least be curious why they are so eager to hire someone they barely know and if they are always that haphazard in their hiring decisions.
    – Seth R
    Commented Apr 24, 2022 at 20:26
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    I'm actually confused about this answer. Is it typical for interviews to include the whole team in some cultures?
    – Gregory Currie
    Commented Apr 25, 2022 at 13:18
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    @GregoryCurrie Not necessarily the whole team, but more than the hiring manager. That's very common in the US. And if it's a role that interacts with multiple teams, people from those different teams or parts of the organization. And for managerial positions, the people who would be reports are included, in my experiences. It's highly unusual for an interview not to include people from multiple relevant parts of the organization.
    – Thomas Owens
    Commented Apr 25, 2022 at 13:38
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So, what would be the smart thing to do here? Is it acceptable to request an onsite interview, for example with HR, ask to meet the team, etc?

If you feel completely comfortable that you want the job given the limited conversation so far, then you just wait for the offer to come and make your decision.

On the other hand, if you need to know more, then ask for an onsite interview to help you make your decision. I typically ask to speak the hiring manager, at least one of my peers, and as many members of my team as possible if I am interviewing for a leadership team. You can also ask to speak with HR if you have questions that they could answer for you.

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I had a similar experience and it worked out well. You should make sure you do your due diligence, and if you have not had an opportunity to ask some important questions about what the job will be like or meet the team you could always ask them for a follow-up.

The way things are at the moment, some people are in very high demand and companies don't want to draw out the interview process in case they get another offer. It sounds like you didn't negotiate a salary, and you should because you could probably get a good amount.

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  • actually when I gave my salary expectations he found it rather high and told me he wasn't sure if it would be possible.The negotiation phase may come once I get the offer with the numbers, if it doesn't meet my expectations.
    – piwai
    Commented Apr 25, 2022 at 7:50
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I'll play devil's advocate. The company has a pile of tech debt or tedious work that doesn't require much oversight, because otherwise more people would be involved in interviewing you. The situation needs only a manager to check off some fixed list of required skills, then they point you to the work. Double predictable if the manager didn't seem especially proficient with the technology.

It's good to be working, but brace yourself.

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    That just repeats the concern but doesn't actually answer the question on "what to do"
    – Hilmar
    Commented Apr 25, 2022 at 5:36

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