Ask HN: How much Slack do you give a recruiter?

I’m (almost) at the offer stage with a company that I really like. The engineers that I’ve spoken with are great, the work sounds interesting, and the industry is exciting. My experience with the recruiter (from the company) has been wanting. They had email problems, it takes a long time to get responses, and they told me an offer was coming more than a week ago. I had to reach out to find out what was going on with the offer (it’s still coming)

I feel like once I get in the engineering group, things will be fine, but the delays with the recruiter are making me have second thoughts about what otherwise was a very exciting prospect.

Is slow communication indicative of bad communication throughout the company, or just a fluke? Should I be worried?

No, if you like the job and the prospective team, don’t worry about it. There’s no telling what the internal bureaucracy is at the company. Even VERY large, well-known, desirable companies can be slow and disorganized in the interview process. No telling how many sign offs, background checks, etc. are required before extending the offer.

Even if the internal recruiter is completely incompetent, the odds of you ever having a future interaction with them are near zero.

It is greatly to your benefit to remain calm, cool, patient, and polite. You never know if the recruiter has to go to bat for you internally. If they don’t like you, they won’t do it.

Good luck!

Sounds pretty normal. Most of these recruiters are not senior and have not learned how to communicate with prospective hires. The lack of professionalism can be a bit jarring, especially if you are applying for a senior-level position.

Edit: I wouldn’t worry. Engineering depts are usually well insulated from whatever nonsense is happening in the HR dept