A monumental waste of time. After weeks of interviewing with HR, then the team, then the manager, going onsite, and many emails and phone calls in between, I withdrew my application after a verbal offer contingent upon a background check (that never got started). Two weeks went by.

The HR person was on vacation one of those weeks. Her backup showed no desire to work with me on the status, even after me inquiring after not hearing for a week, telling me to wait for the original HR person to return from vacation.

Magically, after the original person returned from vacation, there was all of this movement. I doubt that was a coincidence. Then she returns and asks for references! Why not ask for those two weeks before to have that going during the dead time?

If I did point out the inefficiency of this meandering, haphazard process . . . I am underscoring it now for you.

Then, to make matters even worse, the hiring manager emailed me asking if I had heard from HR the day before HR got back from her vacation. It sounded like it was a gigantic internal mess where no one knew what the heck was going on.

So, after all of that, the HR person indicated that there were date gaps in what I put in my application. There were no date gaps. None.

She claimed I didn't put my own company down, which was not true. It was there every time I logged back in and reviewed what I had done before adding more. I would save it and close the browser, go back and log back in and complete some more throughout one evening. It was there all that time.

She said I would have to log back in and add it as she didn't see it (but could see all the other entries I added). When I did that, I couldn't even pull the application up.

I actually provided them 2 more years than what they asked for—5 (and I had to ask that: how far do you want me to go back, as they don't tell you and the application doesn't state it . . . "Good question," she said when I asked . . . again clueless).

So, the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back for me came when she added on a new requirement for verifying self-employment. I just told her I was not doing anymore and withdrew my application.

It was as if they thought they were buying my company and assuming responsibility for my NDAs and confidentiality agreements signed with my clients. Obviously, they don't hire professionals but people fresh off a campus or regular employees of other companies. What a joke.

They asked me about all these tools I've never heard of, with the exception of one: Nagios.

They asked me how to set up a key sign-on.

They asked me what security measures were included in SSL certificates.

They asked me SQL questions.