A senior techie shared a frustrating hiring experience after clearing multiple interview rounds at a high-paying company, only to be rejected during the final stage for a surprising reason.
In a post on X, the techie, Pulkit Mittal, who is an IIT graduate, said he successfully cleared all five interview rounds for a role at a ₹1.5 crore firm.
According to the post, after completing the interviews, he moved to the reference check stage, which is usually one of the last steps before receiving an offer.
However, the process soon became unusual. The company’s HR team asked him to share the contact details of his current manager, skip manager, and three teammates. Mittal also said he was asked to prove that graduates from the Indian Institutes of Technology had worked at his company.
Techie faces unusual hiring demands:
The demands did not stop there; Mittal claimed he was further asked to show proof that people from his college had gone on to work at major tech firms, often referred to as FAANG companies.
In addition, he said the HR team asked him to share screenshots of several work-related details from his current job. These reportedly included his performance reviews, the number of pull requests (PRs) he had submitted, and even counts of tasks from project management tools such as Jira.
Despite providing the information requested during the reference check stage, Mittal said he was eventually rejected. The reason given, according to his post, was that one of the companies he had worked at earlier in his career was not considered “Tier 1” enough.
HT.com has reached out to the user for more details. This report will be updated when he responds.
Check out the post here:
Here’s how people reacted to the post:
X users reacted strongly to the post. Some said the hiring process sounded excessive and questioned why so many proofs were required at the reference check stage.
Others expressed sympathy for the techie, noting that clearing five interview rounds only to face rejection at the end must have been frustrating.
One of the users commented, “This is on a whole other level.”
A second user commented, “I never heard any company ask for ‘PR counts, Jira counts’ in reference check, only 2-3 folks for reference check should be fine.”
A third user commented, “The most toxic trait I’ve heard about in a company. Such a big red flag.”
“They might not have had the budget/vacancy, so they just need a reason not to hire you,” another user commented.
