Hardware issue in interview; recruiter left, no response to follow-up email.
Last week, I had an interview with a representative of a company in Germany. Let me note that I have 10 years of experience working with clients, focusing on copyright for audiovisual content, plus 20 years of experience in photography. After the initial greeting, I was immediately asked what questions I had—without any discussion of my professional background. The recruiter then stated that the role requires a proactive approach and that they perceive me as someone who operates reactively. An interesting observation: if a candidate works in consulting, clients typically reach out when an issue has already arisen, and only a portion of such requests can be considered proactive (e.g., contract updates). The rest are reactive by nature. Does this define a candidate as a reactive specialist? Of course not. The recruiter then mentioned that the company is undergoing restructuring, and I should consider whether I want to work in such an environment (a startup). At this point, we shifted to discussing lead generation processes for sales departments. Just as the conversation was starting to take shape, my laptop crashed with a blue screen error, requiring a system reboot. It took two minutes. During that time, I immediately sent the recruiter an email from my mobile phone, apologizing for the technical issue and informing them that I would be back online shortly. However, when I rejoined, no one was there. Moreover, I received no response—neither to my first email nor my follow-up. Notably, there were still 10 minutes left in the scheduled interview. Yet, no response came in the following hours or days. I find this approach highly unprofessional, exploitative, and frankly, degrading. The interview was on a Friday—you can imagine how this affected the rest of my day and weekend.