Comment by tasty_freeze
5 days ago
A few years back I had a long back and forth (and productive) email exchange with an older engineer (in his 50s, like I was at the time) on a matter of a particular old computer. He lives in a former soviet state. At some point he mentioned job prospects in his country are limited and was willing to relocate. He had excellent English and as a fellow nerd who loves getting into the low level details, I thought he might be a fit at my large & successful US-based company that has offices all over the world. I said I'd be happy to forward his resume to my employer.
A few weeks later HR contacted me: Uh, that was really painfully awkward. The HR person had called to phone screen him and called him "Vlad" or whatever in greeting. The prospective employee went on a rant and said he had never been so disrespected, and it made a terrible impression of how unprofessional my company was by being so cavalier by using his first name.
Needless to say that was the end of the interview process, and I never heard from the guy again. Even if he was a technical fit, the cultural fit was off the charts wrong.
> The HR person had called to phone screen him and called him "Vlad" or whatever in greeting.
Is that measurably worse than the current new normal? Call him Mr. Vladsky, tell him he's a great fit and schedule an interview, then block his number and email and never contact him again.
That's preferable to running the gauntlet of six+ interviews because they can't make a decision after two.
HR at multi-national not aware of culture. Is that ironic?
It's normal - at least for the big US companies, even with a large presence the culture is highly American. I remember when a VP of APAC sent a org email expressing strong feelings about the Black Lives Matter protests, and it was quite awkward since that wasn't really an issue discussed outside the US - he couldn't even understand how it couldn't be an issue for everyone.
Getting to hit the culture filter very early in interviews is probably a better outcome than ending up at the company and feeling awkward, not sure how intentional that is though.
> about the Black Lives Matter protests, and it was quite awkward since that wasn't really an issue discussed outside the US
Maybe outside of NATO. In EU we knew more about Black Lives Matter protests than about local news.
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