Unprofessional Hiring Process and Misleading Verbal Offer
I had a very disappointing experience interviewing with Ness Digital Engineering for a Java Developer role (2–4 years experience).
The first two rounds went reasonably well. In the initial technical rounds, they asked questions about OOP concepts, a Valid Parenthesis coding problem, and some Java Stream API questions. The second round was relatively light, with only a few technical questions.
After these rounds, the HR informed me the next day that I was selected and verbally confirmed the offer. However, no Letter of Intent (LOI) or official communication was sent. After I followed up, HR mentioned that the role was actually a replacement position and the candidate who resigned had taken back their resignation. Because of this, they said I would need to attend another interview for the same job description.
The third interview experience was extremely unpleasant. The interviewer was rude and dismissive throughout the conversation. He provided a GitHub repository and asked me to clone it locally and implement a change to throw an exception if a service does not exist, along with writing test cases. However, there was no clear explanation of the project structure or expectations. When I tried to ask questions to understand the application context, the interviewer seemed irritated and unhelpful.
After struggling to understand the codebase within the limited time and without proper guidance, the interviewer even suggested using AI tools to solve the task. Despite trying, the lack of clarity made it difficult to complete the objective within the short timeframe. After around 35 minutes, the interviewer concluded the session by saying that since the objective was not completed, the interview would end.
The entire situation felt very unprofessional, especially after a verbal offer had already been communicated. Changing the process midway and introducing another interview with a hostile tone reflects poorly on the hiring strategy.
Overall, the experience felt disorganized and discouraging for candidates. Companies should avoid giving verbal offers before finalizing internal hiring decisions and should ensure interviewers treat candidates with professionalism and respect.