I was recently interviewed by Databricks. I was so excited when I received the interview mail from Databricks. But it turned out to be one of the worst interview experiences I've ever had in my professional career. Before explaining the issue, I want to highlight a few points here. The Manager of recruiting (APJ) asked for my colleague's references to check on the performance. I never expected that someone would do a reference check before making an offer of employment. I clearly told him that my current company doesn’t know that I am giving interviews with other companies. But still, he asked me to inform them about the reference check. I trusted him and gave the references because he told me that all my interview round feedback was positive. During the reference check, he made me talk to someone who is going to join Databricks in a month. He told me that it’s causal talk. But it sounded more like an interview. I was really surprised that he made me take it to a person who is not an employee of Databricks. My Interview journey - I applied through LinkedIn for the Talent Sourcer-Customer Success (India) position in the last week of December 2021. After that, I was contacted by the VP of TA for the first round of interviews. It went well. I was moved forward to the next steps. I had my next interview with the manager of recruiting (APJ). It was OK. After a few days, I got an e-mail from the coordinator mentioning that they wanted to move forward to the next round. I met different leaders, like sourcing managers, heads of TA, and senior technical recruiters from different geographies. The whole thing lasted for almost 45+ days. Again, I met with the manager of recruiting for the final interview. Till then, I was totally blind about the rounds of interviews and the feedback from the previous interviews. I asked the recruiting manager for feedback, and he said that so far, everyone's feedback has been positive. I was quite happy thinking that I was going to get the offer from them. He told me that the final step was to get a reference check from my current company. After having multiple rounds for almost 50 days and a reference check, he got back to me saying that the team decided not to move forward as they're looking for some senior experienced candidates. Seriously? Don't they remember this from the beginning of the interview? To the Management- Please investigate this issue and make some changes. If not, it will create bad impressions of Databricks. I don’t want this to happen to some other candidate. Thank you!