I applied to Auth0 directly via their careers page. Within a week I heard back from a recruiter and scheduled an initial chat. The conversation with the recruiter was great, Emily provided me with a nice overview of the role and other similar roles within the company. A few days after that conversation I had a call with the hiring manger who asked some questions around technical and career experience. Following that conversation I had a one hour technical interview with two staff engineers on the team. The first half of the interview was about a project I had worked on previously, while the second half focused on how I would go about designing a new service. From my perspective, the call went well, both interviewers were very engaged and asked a lot of questions. Unfortunately after the technical interview I never heard back from anyone at Auth0. It has been a few weeks now and I find the lack of response rather unprofessional. Throughout the process it seemed that Auth0 was in the process of merging HR and email systems with Okta so maybe that was the reason why I did not hear back.

The team, manager, and interview process were all great. But the very negative and insulting experience with the recruiter needs to be called out. The recruiter was initially really helpful and had an encouraging attitude and even gave me tips and I ended passing their phone screen and onsite. Then the recruiter comes back asking what salary I’m looking for. I mention that I don’t have a number in mind. I give her a number for a base and she starts giving me the ‘money’s not everything’ speech, which is honestly okay. But I then mention that I’m interviewing with other companies. Her tone changes and she says ‘you should have been transparent with me that you were interviewing with other companies’. She then says she’ll get back with me that day with an offer saying I’m the ‘top candidate’. I don’t hear back for a week. Then when I hear back, I get an exploding offer on Friday and get told to respond on Monday. I tell her I’ll be respectful of your time, but I’ll try my best on Monday since I’m waiting on other offers. Then on Monday I get a verbal offer elsewhere that’s much higher. I wanted to see if I could extend the deadline and negotiate, I call her and say ‘I want to be respectful of the team’s time. So if it’s not possible, I’m going to have to pass.’ The gap between salaries for my location was just too high at the time, but I called especially because she and the team had been so helpful in the process and I wanted to let her know. Then she flips and says, ‘You know, I don’t think YOU have been respectful of the team’s time, we gave you this competitive offer and all this time to make a decision and you told me Monday. So I think you not joining is probably for the best.’ Then abruptly hangs up on me. Confused, I send her an apology text message anyways, and of course I didn’t get a response. I put quite a bit of effort in this preparing. The interviews were pretty challenging. And again, the team, manager, and company were awesome, but the experience with the recruiter was uncalled for, and personally, I want an apology. I would love to share my experience with Okta/Auth0’s HR or recruiting staff of this unprofessional behavior directly.