Terrible and incompetent recruiters. I decided not to proceed with Zillow at all.

Just to give you background for the further story: I'm a Principal SWE at a public software development company located in Silicon Beach, with 15 years of experience. I'm definitely not a person who would expect the attitude described below.

I became interested in Zillow Offers' SSWE position in Irvine and contacted their NA Recruiting Lead. She suggested two ladies to reach out to, as she was on maternity leave. I chose one person randomly, and since then, the whole process was botched and just a waste of time.

The first lady scheduled a call and asked many questions. At the end, she told me that the position I had mentioned (in advance, before the call!) was not under her responsibility, so she would ask the other recruiting lady to call me. I definitely applaud this recruiter; she organized a very "professional" and useless phone call.

That second recruiting lady never called. I tried to contact her myself, but she never responded. The resume I uploaded to their system went nowhere. So, I just forgot about Zillow. That was the beginning of August 2019.

Out of the blue in October 2019, I was suddenly contacted by their new recruiter. I received a standard flattering email telling me that my experience "aligns perfectly" with their open position. LOL! When I responded to the recruiter, he said he didn't actually know that I had applied two months before. It took him a while to find my application. He then told me some nonsense: that my resume was indeed received on September 17th (omg, what a lie – I actually applied in August), and the only reason I wasn't contacted is because the second recruiting lady was currently on vacation, so she probably didn't see the application (seems like another "professional" lie).

Then, it took him several days just to schedule a phone call, and then he didn't actually call at the scheduled time. I was already laughing at Zillow's recruiting department; this case added more laughs. Anyway, I accepted his apologies, and we did have a phone call a couple of days later. The recruiter gathered the same (!) information as the first lady and promised to arrange a call with the hiring manager. Needless to say, that never happened – he never called or messaged back.

Well, I have seen imperfect recruiters before. But it seems like Zillow decided to say "hold my beer, bro" and show how a really disorganized recruiting process might look. Good job – you nailed it, Zillow!

What's your background?