Submitted my resume directly to a recruiter's email. A former colleague had interviewed with them but ended up elsewhere, and the recruiter approved for me to reach out directly.

I spoke with the recruiter, indicating I was interested in a position on the Elasticsearch product. They wanted me to interview with a different team first; the one they were hiring for that primarily used Ruby and not Java. I took a gamble and, in the nicest way possible, asked to apply for the position on the Elastic team since that's the one I was originally interested in and a better fit for. I eventually got a callback from the recruiter that handled the Elasticsearch opening. We had a general discussion over Zoom video about team fit and my background. It was explained to me that the next step would be to take a HackerRank test at a time of my convenience. I was asked to let them know when I'd be starting it because "we like to have someone grade it right away." I said I'd take it at the beginning of the following week and keep them informed when I started it. They said that was fine.

After the call, I studied for a few days, as there would be elements involving concurrency that I needed to review.

The night before I took the test, as requested, I sent a heads-up email. Didn't get a response, but I also didn't expect one.

The next day, I took the 1.5-hour timed HackerRank challenge and submitted it. I then sent a short follow-up email to say, "I submitted it and I'm looking forward to continuing the process." Hmmm, no response after a few days. That's odd. I just invested a significant amount of my time on this at the recruiter's request, and no response?

A week later, I sent a gentle follow-up, saying something to the nature of, "Just checking in...etc...if for some reason you've decided to move forward with other candidates, but just for peace of mind, could you acknowledge the receipt of the exam?" No response.

It's been a couple of months now, and still no response. I'm obviously no longer expecting one. I don't care if the recruiter or the reviewers felt my submission was a complete failure; you owe some form of acknowledgment. This was the most unprofessional experience I've ever had with a company, and I hope someone from Elastic reads this and corrects it.

I think it's fair to say you should use caution in investing time at the request of recruiters at this company (or any company, really), as it may be the last time you hear from them. If you look back through the other reviews of Elastic, you will find my situation was not an isolated incident.

It's really too bad, as I generally like this company. Hope they fix this.

Questions on concurrency