The vacancy was in Ecosystem security team. I applied via LinkedIn. Got a call from the recruiter who briefed me about the process and the 5 rounds.
First round was an interview with the hiring manager over Zoom. This was to be a 45 min round. In the interview the hiring manager takes first 15 min talking about the security team stucture and the role and then goes silent. So I offer to talk about myself (which is the point of the interview, I think). I talk about my most recent experience and ask the interviewer to let me know if I should go further back. They ask no question about my experience and switch to the technical part of the interview.
They start with a very generic question of what is XSS. I explain the attack, types, impact and remediation. They ask if the impact changes if there is an API in the backend. They also ask if I have done Pentesting, Threat Modelling and Code Review. To which I answer no, yes and yes. Interestingly the job description on LinkedIn does not list any of these skills and is very vague.
Then they switch to the next question of what my ideal job looks like. Next they ask if I have any questions. And the interview ends in about 35 min after I ask 2 quick ones.
Then after a couple of days I get an email that they are not inclined. If felt like the interviewer had already decided they are not going to hire me and was forced to attend the interview. They were quite uninterested in testing my skills or hearing about my experiences. It's a shame that for the feedback I was told that I did not fulfill the technical requirements. As in I had not done Pentesting and my answers were high level.
I was quite disappointed to hear that. Asked the recruiter to please add Pentesting experience in the job requirement. I checked the JD on LinkedIn after a few days and they had not updated it. Which reminds me that the hiring manager also said in the interview it is very hard to hire in Australia. Now I know why.
I do not understand why I would be rejected on technical grounds in a non technical (screening) round based on skills that are not required for the job. Also when you ask a very open ended and simple question why would you expect the answers to be very in-depth. Why not ask a few more questions to understand the level of experties.
The recruiter did a great job and the process is otherwise quite streamlined. But the hiring manager round was quite a disappointment.