The All-Women Drive: There were at least 60 women candidates attending the interview.

The 'first round,' as they called it, took place at the scheduled time. It was an elaborate interview spanning close to an hour, covering a range of topics, from design to development details to data structures – you name it!

It seemed to have gone perfectly well. The interviewer and I walked out of the meeting room, and he asked me to wait for my next round.

Three hours passed, and they took their time to complete their interviews with all the candidates. Then there was an on-the-house pizza treat for lunch!

A little while after that, one of the HRs came over to me and did a 'psst psst!' We stepped aside, only for me to hear from her that I didn't make it.

While waiting there for that considerably long time, I got talking to some of the candidates and found that they were working on similar or the exact same project (a financial product) in other companies as the one the recruitment was happening for.

I only wonder, if they had already figured out the desired qualification for the job (which is the experience on a similar project), why didn't they mention that in the JD? And why did they waste everyone's time calling so many people, holding them up for so many hours on a weekend?

Meaningless!

None.