zlacker

My understanding is when MS decides they aren't going to hire, they cut off all communication, total lot drop. Sometimes at their own campus, no feedback at all.

It's really an angering experience imo. I mean, I get it from a litigious mindset, but still not very humane.

>>tracke+(OP)
That's not true, usually you'll get a message from the recruiter. You might not get interview feedback, but you'll know if you got turned down.

Even if you don't, you submit applications through a recruiting site, and it tells you the current status of your application. It'll tell you if the application was rejected.

>>tracke+(OP)
My experience while interviewing with MS is somewhat similar with respect to not hearing back after each stage. The initial phone interview was quick with what seemed like a lower level HR person who asked basic questions from a list with many mispronunciations of MS SQL technologies. I didn't hear anything for three weeks so I called them and they said, "Oh yeah. We want to schedule another phoner with the product team". A few days later I interviewed with for about an hour with two engineers and it was more inline with what I had expected. This time I sent an email the next day thanking them hoping that would at least keep me in the back of their minds. Same thing. About three weeks later I called to find out my status. "Oh yeah. We would like to fly you to Virginia for an in person interview this week". They set up my flight and hotel and I went through three interviews with different groups and left thinking, "Well that was horrible and embarrassing. They are way above anyone I had ever worked with". Same thing. Sent an email thanking them along with my expenses. About six weeks later I needed to know my status since funds were getting low. I called them up and was told I wasn't ready to work for them. But I should add them on LinkedIn to keep in touch. My self esteem was pretty shot, but I ended up with a pretty sweet job that week. I still get emails from them every once in a while when a position opens up, but three years later I still get a little anxious when those emails hit.

So yeah, their post interview stage communication seems to be the weakest part of a process I am sure I was one of hundreds going through at that time.

>>munchb+J
Replying to myself, because the sibling comment is clearly at odds with what I'm saying, and I think that deserves to be addressed with more nuance than my first comment did.

I think there's a lot of variation in the quality of your interview experience when you interview at Microsoft based on how on top of things the recruiter is, how much the hiring manager prioritizes candidate experience, and headcount/budget complexities. Some teams don't have recruiters, so then the candidate experience is whatever the hiring manager makes time for.

I don't doubt the horror stories. For context, several years ago I applied for three different roles. I got rejected at the resume screen for one of them, rejected after the first phone interview for another, and I ended up taking an offer from the third. For both rejections, I got the news by email notification through Microsoft's careers app, not from the recruiter or from the hiring manager. I think it's a really impersonal way to find out after you've already done an interview round.

The specific point I was making is that, contrary to the parent comment but not the sibling comment, there is a standard way of doing things that ends with following up with the candidate. And, as a candidate, you do have explicit ways of figuring out what happened to your application, even if finding out you failed an interview via an app is kind of shitty. It's definitely not standard to ghost the candidate.

>>munchb+J
I waited a week and a half with no reply/response from anyone... It was the third email a few weeks after that finally got a dismissive response. This was around 2004 iirc, not sure if it's changed significantly since, or when your experience is related or where/what you were interviewing for.