I applied online for the position of Operations Specialist. About a week later their personnel contacted me to schedule an interview. The attititude was very friendly and we exchanged a couple of letters and scheduled a date for the interview. I also received information about certain details of the interview. But everything went south after that.
On the day of the interview I arrived at the Tallinn office of TransferWise. I was interviewed by two employees, unfortunately some of the information provided about the interview before turned out to be incorrect. The interview was conducted in English.
Preloaded with intel from Glassdoor reviews and TransferWise insiders I was expecting a fun and loose conversation, it was nothing like that. The interviewers were most of the time dead serious, they asked no questions about me as a person, about my hobbies or sth like that, also no funny or weird questions.
The main problem with the interview was that the interviewers had absolutely no idea about the sector that I had been working in before as my main job (I was an operations specialist with a lot of experience in operational work). Although I tried to explain and answer their questions as best as I could about my past job, I still got a feeling that they simply were unable to understand my experience or what the sector is about. They turned no attention to the fact that I also had a secondary job for many years that would complement the operational experience, they asked 0 questions about it, I almost had a sense that maybe they hadn't read my CV and application letter.
The interview took about 45 minutes, after which I was asked to fill in a written test. I am not going to disclose any of the questions, but there was a nasty surprise there - there were some questions that I would call factual questions that I was simply unable to answer because I had no experience or training with this particular topic that they asked about.
A couple of days later I received information that they had decided not to move forward with me. The explanation was that there were candidates with better experience. Turned out that they were seeking for people with experience in banking. I didn't have it, and I also got incorrect answers to the factual questions in the written test. But: experience in banking was NOT A REQUIREMENT and it was not mentioned in the job ad. I would have never applied if it had been a requirement. Also from the additional information it was clear that the interviewers had a total misconception about the sector I had been working in. Also it was stated that I had no other experience, which was simply not true (but as you remember, they didn't ask anything about my secondary job or interests).
I cannot blame the company for seeking experienced specialists in a particular field, but please, write it in your job ad. I could have saved the company and myself a whole lot of time by not applying. Also another suggestion for interviewing future candidates - maybe provide for the interview at least one interviewer who has had at least some knowledge about the sector where the applicant has worked before.
Additional remark - this was my first interview ever where the invitation to the interview contained an instruction about what to wear. Although the company likes to state in various sources that they don't like corporate nonsense, I would say that writing in the e-mail the dress code is pretty close to corporate nonsense.