I applied online, through their website, with my résumé and a cover letter. In my cover letter, I described (very clearly) my language skills as well as my experiences living in the countries that this position would look over. About a week later, I received an email from an Indeed recruiter asking me the following:
1. On which basis I was legally elegible to work in the U.S.
2. To describe my experience in the specific country, since the position will need someone who has deep country knowledge and business level proficiency, etc.
At this point, it was obvious they had not even read my cover letter. I repeated myself by answering their second question and sent it back. Also, in this email they said that "if they found my experiences appropriate" they would send me a writing exercise which would be an hour long.
To be honest with you, at this point I expected a call from the recruiter to know more about the company culture, the day-to-day aspects of the job and such details. This considering that, they are already wanting you to give up one hour of your time towards a job that you don't know much about.
Anyway, I followed the process. They thought my experiences were good enough and they went ahead and sent me the exercise (you will be able to see the questions asked below). The exercise, in my opinion (being a native spanish speaker and thinking it was easy enough), is pretty tight for one hour. It took me exactly 50 stressful minutes to complete it.
After sweating out the exercise, I sent it back with a personal note directed to the recruiter. Now, at this stage anyone would expect a confirmation to ensure they received the exercise.
Well, I didn't receive anything. Not even a thank you, after spending 50 minutes of my precious time doing their exercise.
I sent the exercise on a Thursday afternoon. Friday, Monday and most of Tuesday of the following week went by without any news. At this point, I decide to ask the recruiter if they received the exercise since I didn't get any confirmation. She told me that they would be in touch as soon as they get the assessment back which should be soon. So, they hadn't even seen it? Who was grading it? All of a sudden I felt like this job application was not the job of the recruiters I had been in contact with anymore.
So, Wednesday at 9AM I get a generic email (not from the recruiters that I had talked to, but from a no reply address) saying that they have decided not to move on with my candidacy.
All of this to say that there is large room for improvement regarding their recruiting team. I fell out of interest for this position since the moment they didn't call me personally. Fortunately, at that time, I had plenty of time to do as many writing exercises they would ask me to do. However, not all candidates have that much time in their hands and this process could make more than one lose interest.