Overall, this was hands down the worst recruiter screen I have ever experienced and a terrible first impression with Apple.

Usually, the recruiter call is the fun part. You get to talk to cheery, sociable people, and it's a great break from sitting in front of a computer. I've never really had a negative recruiter experience that I can recall. Unfortunately, it changed here.

Here were the red flags:

• Red Flag #1: I applied to Apple sometime in 2017, at least 6 months prior to the phone call. I had completely forgotten about it and figured since I was in a remote location, there was limited headcount. Not a problem, since there were more fish in the sea.

• Red Flag #2: I received a random email from a recruiter. It immediately seemed off because it was simply an Apple logo as the subject and a two-liner body asking for my availability and a Calendly link. All recruiter emails are sent out en masse; that's fine, but this one didn't put any thought or personal touch into the body and thought the Apple brand would be enough, literally.

• Red Flag #3: I opened the Calendly link and noticed the availability was anytime between 7 AM–7 PM. Most recruiters have the standard 8-hour availability on their Calendly; not this one. How many hours were they making her work?

• Red Flag #4: It's call time; it's 7:30 AM, and we're in the same time zone because the recruiter is in California and I'm in Seattle. I figured I'd be her first call. Nope! She ended up calling 20 minutes late. The reason was because she agreed to do some setup for another project, with no warning. I'm a laid-back guy, and the red flags were accumulating; I should have bowed out at this point, but I figured I'd let it pass and take her word that she's just a workaholic with no life (her words, verbatim) and let it go.

• Red Flag #5: We started talking, and she began describing the team she was hiring for. It turns out it's in SF. I specifically applied to Seattle; my resume said I'm located in Seattle; my LinkedIn says I'm not interested in anywhere but Seattle/New York, but she went and shoehorned an SF team onto my radar.

• Red Flag #6: She kept describing the team using buzzwords: "fast-paced, disruptive, challenging!" My experience in the biggest tech hub besides SF has been that these buzzwords usually entail bad work-life balance and coworkers who make tech their life—i.e., very myopic, unbalanced people. I was already a bit hesitant applying to a tech company, having worked at a different one with similar employees/culture, but now my spidey sense was really starting to go off! ("I don't feel so good, Ms. Recruiter.")

• Red Flag #7: I mentioned how I'm in-between jobs but have some pending offers. This was not a lie; I left my job on my own volition. The market was hot, and I was confident of my abilities, and I ended up with a few competitive offers within two weeks and was quickly approaching offer deadlines. Unfortunately, that went in one ear and out the other because all she heard was how I was in-between jobs and how that was going to be a huge red flag on their side, and she was asking why I left. It didn't matter that I needed to sign an offer within a couple of weeks and needed to interview ASAP; she was just grilling me on why I left. Keep in mind that this was no issue with other recruiters, but this recruiter was grilling me like your worst recruiting horror story.

• Red Flag #8: I told her that I left because I wanted a change after a few years at my ex-company, I wanted a vacation between jobs, and because the previous job was not a good culture fit, since we were working 60-hour weeks and it had a lot of the myopic engineers I mentioned earlier (can you guess why I'm weary of tech companies at this point?). Once again, it went in one ear and out the other. I have always been this candid with recruiters, and it led to simple understanding from the recruiters and often times job offers. Again, this recruiter had to go out of her way to grill me on how that wouldn't fly at Apple and how I sound like I don't want to work! Apparently, not working 60 hours meant not working, though I should have inferred that reasoning from her schedule.

At this point, she said she'd submit me to the SF teams, but I had made peace that Apple was not a company I wanted to work at based on this interaction. I signed another offer and sent an email stating I would not be going forward with them.

I understand it's a big company, and I shouldn't make blanket statements like this, but this was an interaction so far left field from any other recruiter interaction and was so surreal that it sounded more like a "Silicon Valley" skit than a real phone call. It was so surreal that I'd be very wary of future interactions with the company if this is how the people that are supposed to be the friendly ones behave.

Moreover, Apple is always excluded from conversations amongst software engineers when it comes to GOOG/MS/AMZN/FB, and from this interaction, it makes sense why.

What your work experience was and what you're interested in.