When I saw a posting at Slack I was ELATED. It’s my dream company. I have been waiting years to get the chance to interview with them. For some people their goal is Stripe or Google or Apple, mine was Slack. It took 2 months to hear back after applying, and two weeks to interview. It consisted of a recruiter phone screen, an assessment, and 3 Zooms. The Zooms were with all of the managers of the department. First Zoom didn’t go well. He right off the bat told me many people applied for this role and I’m just one of many. It killed my confidence. Second one didn’t have any rapport. I was 0/2. Last one was great, made small talk, warm and friendly, made me feel comfortable, I felt like I finally got my stride. But I knew the first 2 mattered more than the last one. You can’t be 1/3. By day 4 I knew I hadn’t gotten an offer so I emailed the recruiter to ask if my skills were a match for another role that had been posted that was similar. The recruiter ignored me. Day 7 came the news, “we chose someone else”. I replied that I was disappointed but wanted feedback on how to improve. Crickets. I sent another email 5 days later, never heard back. I was so disappointed by my experience. I had prepared, practiced for a week, did nothing non stop but go over material like it was the SATs. I WANTED this job, I had been waiting for 4 years for something at Slack to open, so of course I was nervous during interview. But I ust because you want something bad enough doesn’t mean you’ll get. It’s a hard truth to swallow but it’s life. More than anything I was just shocked by how bad their recruiter was. I thought a company like Slack would have the crème de crème of recruiters working for them. I needed that feedback, I need to know how to improve so I can slay it if I’m ever called up again, and they ignored my emails, and didn’t reply on LinkedIn. I’m disappointed in myself for not acing it (I just suck at interviews, I always freeze and my brain moves faster than my mouth can get it out) but also that they didn’t even care to help me understand what I did wrong was deflating. Ramp and Square all offered follow up calls to go over feedback. I’ve had some great recruiters who want to help you find any place they can at the company. They’re really on your side. Slack wasn’t that. I got the impression that they don’t want to see you succeed, they want to run you through your paces. I won’t be applying to work for them again. The experience sucked, the recruiter was bad, now even when I see their commercials on tv I turn the tv off, and curse anytime I have to use Slack at work. It killed my dream. Lesson learned? Your dream company will not live up to the dream. Don’t worship false idols. Even the mighty Salesforce drops the ball. It was probably because I wanted it so bad but I have never felt more let down by a company. It’s many days later and it still stings.

The interview process took 4 weeks after hearing back (about 2 weeks after I submitted my application online). I had an overwhelmingly positive experience -- the people who work at Slack are passionate and driven, some of the best I've come across. The recruiter did an incredible job helping me to prepare and guiding me through the process and I really enjoyed meeting the team. I first had a quick screen with the recruiter, then a 1:1 phone interview with the hiring manager before being brought on site. Onsite was about 2.5 hours and it was a combination of 1:1 and panel interviews.