I recently left a long time job that I was at for almost 10 years. I applied to a company for a senior management role and had an initial phone screen with the recruiter, then a separate interview with the hiring manager a couple days after.
A week after the second interview, the recruiter contacted me for a third interview with a different senior manager.
At the beginning of the interview, the person introduced themselves as a senior manager who is a close colleague of the hiring manager. They explained that I would not be reporting to them but they would like to know details about my previous employer and the names and titles of people I worked with. They asked How I felt about my previous company, why I left etc. the entire interview was about that last employer and nothing about my skills.
The conversation was very cold and somewhat condescending. Towards the end of this interview, they explained that they were a former employee of my previous employer, and come across people who fluff their résumé all the time by putting my previous employer on their resume. They stated that their goal in speaking to me was to fact check to see if I even worked there and afterwards they will be calling around to ask people about me and the names I gave them.
I have never experienced this and it felt very demeaning that someone at this stage in their career with a ton of industry certs and PhD would have to experience this type of scrutiny.
I thought the purpose of a background check and reference check was to fact check. This is a pretty reputable company. Is this a common practice these days? What are your thoughts?