Unethical, Unprofessional:

I was contacted by the manager himself. I had a telephonic interview and then an onsite interview.

The hiring panel consisted of mostly contractors who had been converted to full-timers. Three of them asked hard questions, which I am sure they themselves couldn't solve. One of them sounded particularly creepy when he started asking me questions like how I could access internal APIs of my company from a public network and how we reach service discovery.

Walmart's hiring manager reached back to me with an offer after two days.

I was astounded to learn that, as part of making a decision on my application, one of the interviewers contacted someone in my immediate team at my current employer to get feedback about me. Their request for feedback went all the way to my director, and I came under scrutiny from management.

Neither did I give consent for references, nor did I give any names to contact. Also, there was no offer made by them by the time they contacted someone for feedback. This was all proactively done by Walmart's team.

For this unethical and unprofessional behavior of Walmart's interview team, I decided to reject the offer without negotiation.

I informed my manager at my current employer that I had rejected the offer. To my surprise, he told me that Walmart had communicated that they rejected me.

So, here is my advice to you all for interviews:

1. If possible, avoid Walmart.
2. If you still go ahead, avoid disclosing what you do at your current company.
3. By no means tell them about the team you are working for.

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