I had a job that I was going to apply for at a company that I looked into and was pretty excited about. The company was fully remote and even had asynchronous working schedules, 100% individual health coverage, annual development funds, etc.
As I was looking at the job listing and scrolling to the bottom they laid out their “interview process”. The sheer number of interviews alone was a bit of a turn off (5, one of which is a panel), and they also want you to do a case study and presentation before ever actually talking with anyone other than the recruiter, which prevents the potential employee from being able to determine if the company is a good fit for them before having to devote multiple hours of work that I'm assuming is unpaid.
But the final dagger was the company uses a system called Veremark to have the employee go through a more in depth employment history check. Btw for those who don't know or aren't in the US, when a company runs a standard background check on an employee, part of that includes employment verification that is able to tell you what company a person worked for and for how long they were on payroll. This process does not provide any details beyond that, but also doesn't let the previous employers know that a check was run. This company wants you to sign off on this extra process that involves you having to write down you previous employment information INCLUDING job titles, and then they will actually CONTACT THE COMPANIES TO VERIFY THE INFO.
This is extremely problematic for a number of reasons. First, the entire purpose of this system is to try and catch interviewees in potential lies. Remember, by this point you have already gone through several interviews and done a case study and presentation, and yet this company still is making people do this. If you cannot trust potential employees to be able to accurately do the job after that, the focus should be on how to make your interview process better, not make candidates jump through even more hoops. Second, they are missing out on one key facet: employers lie. Hell, even I have a job listed on my resume that I was a supervisor at and was told as such, but my company refused to put my title in writing and give me the pay bump I was owed, so I left. I still put the title as a supervisor role because that's what I did, but I guarantee that's not what my employer had my final title as. But instead of putting that odus on the previous employer, this system will simply blame the employee. And lastly, they want to reach out to your employer and verify this ALL BEFORE THEY GIVE YOU AN ACTUAL OFFER. Yes, that's right. You don't even have the job guaranteed at this point, so you now have a company basically telling your current employer that you plan on leaving with no protection for you as an employee. Good thing no employer would ever fire someone out of retaliation for something like that, right? /s
Workers are putting up with less and less shit these days, and having okay pay or average benefits isn't good enough any more. Companies need to understand that the time of people looking for jobs actually matters, and they can't expect to get the best candidates of you are making them have to jump through all of these hoops just to hope they get an offer.
For those wondering, the company is called Remote. It's super interesting how they have such a high employee rating on Glassdoor, but if you jump over to their Interviews tab, things aren't nearly as positive for the company. Doesn't seem fishy at all…