Most bizarre recruitment I've *ever* experienced. Talent acquisitions staff reached out to me based on my experience to set up the prelim phone screen. I forwarded my resume prior. No questions about my experience, some vague questions about ideal workplace / working situation. Ninety percent of the call is focused on the business, how things have changed, what they're branching into, the benefits, etc. Call concludes with recruiter asking me for references and salary range. As with every other job, I decline to provide this indicating I need to meet with someone on the team I'd be working with, get a feel for the position expectations, and we can go from there (I wasn't even provided a job description at this point). He said he would be flexible and let that slide. Next day I receive an email asking to indicate potential interview availability and provide references within 24 hours. I immediately call and email the HR staff associated, explain I don't provide references until after the face to face. She replies "If you would like to wait until further in the process to provide references, that is totally OK as well" Monday I complete the interview availability and receive another email from the recruiter. Immediately goes into asking for references again. This is a huge red flag at this point. I explain in a polite email that I'm not going to waste the time of my references and I surely can't make a judgement call about a position from talking to a recruiter. Considering this is the third time I'm restating my position, I reply "if you are inflexible regarding this process, please let me know and we can stop things here." Recruiter responds that we should "go our separate ways" at this point. I forward the email onto the Director of this affiliated department as I'm now confused and pissed at this point. I've been nothing but 100% consistent and transparent, and I need to know if this is just recruitment scuttling my application or if it goes higher up. In my email to the Director, I explain the process and state "I don't see how waiting for more information is an unreasonable ask (or unexpected from a data manager), as this request requires external people to invest their time when I am the person under consideration. I'm frankly confused why this stance would not be respected." No response from the Director Recruiter contacts me, speaking for Director apparently, stating Data Management was involved in the decision to no longer go forward. STILL no response from the Director TL;DR You can be 100% upfront during the beginning and tell them you're not providing references until after the face to face. They will repeatedly say it's OK only to ask you for them anyways. And don't forget, they reached out to *you* If they were Facebook, Google, or Netflix, I can totally see doing this, but they're a company that's major gains came from selling a product that required laying off 73% of their workforce in 2016. You'd think they *might* be a little more humble after that. Additionally, if you department director is either too busy or unwilling to make a phone call or respond to an email by a job candidate, I can only imagine what that work environment must be like.