A recruiter reached out to me about Peloton and I agreed to do their Karat live interview for a one hour tech screen. Both the recruiter and the Karat interviewer mentioned straight away that candidates can interview one more time if they have an off day.
I unfortunately had an off day the first time around. I should have rescheduled and that's on me, but the recruiter suggested I attempt the redo so I agreed and he spoke with Peloton. I received an email from the company asking me to schedule the second attempt and I did just that.
I rocked in the second interview and felt really good about the results. I have 10 years of experience including designing and building highly scalable systems and it showed.
I received an email from Peloton HR stating that they will not be moving forward with me and did not include a reason, however the email did say that I was free to ask for feedback. I very politely asked for feedback.
The feedback included both interview sessions and, as I expected, the results were not good for the first interview. The second interview only had positive feedback and was in line with how I felt it went.
I was confused because the second interview was completely positive but they still decided to pass. I replied thanking the HR person for providing me with the feedback and asked what I could have done better or differently in the second interview. To my surprise I got no response at all.
It seems clear that the hiring manager made up their mind not to move forward with me after my first attempt and that is completely understandable. What is not understandable however is that the hiring manager seemingly didn't bother to tell me or anyone else, so they let me waste my time interviewing a second time despite having already made up their mind.
I definitely don't want to work for any manager who disrespects people's time this way, nor will I work for a company that permits this kind of disrespect.
I want to be clear that the Karat interviewers were very professional and courteous. Karat is a third-party interviewing service and they are contracted by Peloton to perform tech screens. My experience with Karat was positive in stark contrast to my experience with Peloton.