I was invited for a screening in November, then given a technical interview in January. The screening was fairly standard, with questions on my experience and the tools I have used, etc. More than a month later, I had my technical interview, and the team failed to send a meeting link, so I had to proactively request the web link myself. I was bizarrely rejected the day before without attending the interview. Apparently, this was sent to all candidates by accident. I assumed I was rejected, made other plans, but only found out in the early hours of the interview day that the rejection was a mistake, so I attended the interview with only a few hours of sleep. The tech interview was focused purely on DevOps knowledge, database infrastructure and coding style rather than scientific problem solving or bioinformatics and statistical methods. The job was advertised as a functional genomics bioinformatician role, but from the interview, it was crystal clear that this was a pure data engineering/ DevOps "plumbing" role. I was not notified before the interview that it would involve only assessing code and engineering questions associated with the code. Furthermore, for a 1-year contract, the 3-month, 3-stage process is unreasonable and out of sync with the lack of job security offered. Following the interview, I was ghosted for over 2 weeks and sent an unsuccessful email. After witnessing the staggering display of disorganisation, the sending of mass rejections to the applicant pool before the interviews, and the misleading job description, this shows a complete lack of professionalism and respect for candidates' time and preparation.

Applied online to the structural biology group that handles pdb/alphafolddb. The interview was on zoom online due to covid restrictions. I interviewed at European Bioinformatics Institute (Hinxton, England) in mid 2022. Initial communication from HR who set up an initial screening call from hiring manager. A later date was set for the interview which consisted of three parts: a panel interview with senior team leaders and the group leader, technical interview with one the members and meet the rest of the team. Technical and meet the team interviews were okay and relaxed. However, I picked up poor communication and lack of interpersonal skills in the panel interview: despite questions being standard and easy, the g leaders’ delivery was authoritative, without context (What questions), acted tough, and seem to rush through questions without really pausing to listen. It had everything to do with inferiority complex than the accent. The atmosphere was tense. The other panellists acted calm, mature and allowed me to finish my sentences. Found out someone from geographical background was hired for the position.