To feel a bit annoyed this is why I got rejected?

[ToeSucker]

I completed 5 rounds of interviews for a company. For the final interview, I had to travel across the country for an in-person meeting.

At this meeting (I met the whole team) there was a coffee break where we popped out to the local coffee shop.

The hiring manager asked me what I wanted. She also asked me what the team members next to me wanted. She paid for everyone's drinks.

Today I received a call from HR saying I was rejected, but mentioning I owe the hiring manager £3.70 for a coffee.

I'm shocked by this. I'm not sure I should be. I should have offered to pay I suppose but you're not in a normal frame of mind during interviews. I'm more annoyed I had to pay almost £240 for the train tickets and got rejected with this seemingly contributing to why.

I don’t believe this at all either.

Don’t pay it

Not sure I believe this is real.

But if it is, send an invoice for your travel costs with the price of the coffee deducted. Payment due within 14 days, thanks.

Has OP been back yet?

I would send the money to the higest person in the company and ask for proper feedback

“dear CEO as requested here is the 3:75 for the coffee apologies i assumed i was being offered it as x paid for everyone else “

i traveled by train to x hopeful that i had the requisite skills and aptitude i would appreciate some feedback to avoid future costly mistakes

They should have paid for your train travel! Shocking that a 7th interview and their insistence it take place across the country for you and they didn't pay to get you there.

The coffee is a red herring. You should leave them scathing reviews about the whole process.

You definitely dodged a bullet with that company and not just because they asked for the reimbursement for the coffee.

A 5-stage recruitment process is completely unnecessary (I work in HR). It shows how poor the company culture is. No thoughts about budgets - this process is costly. You lose good candidates throughout the process due to the length of time it takes. There is no evidence to show that lengthy recruitment processes result in better hires. Timely hiring goes out of the window as there are too many people involved in the decision making process. It shows an organisation that lacks trust in its people, if you need 5 different groups of people to be involved in the hiring decision for 1 person.

My experience of a recent process that worked very well. 1st interview with hiring manager and a colleague. Competency based. 2nd interview with a Director and colleague to see if the individual was a good fit for the organisation. An £85k a year, quite specialised role. Said person got the job and is performing that well after 6 months, they are being promoted. The organisation trusted the hiring manager and Director to choose the right person.

Anyway, back to the coffee money. You have a few choices. Bill them for the train ticket minus the coffee cost. Ignore the request or if you really don’t care - just send them an e-mail asking ‘are you having a laugh?’

Some companies think it’s fine to treat you like shit. They even have someone hired specifically for that task - a ‘talent acquisition manager’ or some such. I’m sorry this happened to you. I was ghosted after four interviews, endless schlepping across town in uncomfortable clothes, late night prep and a verbal offer. The ‘talent acquisition’ doesn’t seem to extend to communicating with the unsuccessful people who spent days on their interview processes. Who knows what goes through these dickwads’ heads?

You are well shot but I agree with pp, send the coffee amount in small coins and be glad they didn’t offer it to you. Imagine working in a place where that was ok!

This 💯!
The cheek of that! What job was it for god sake? Take it to the tabloids and write an online review. No one is in a position to lose that amount of money £243.70 😮 How dare they treat you like that. They’re having a laugh at your expense. What can they possibly get from that? They sound horrid!

I’d definitely invoice them for your travel costs.

Which is ridiculous, because of course you wouldn’t pay in that situation. It’s not like going out for a break with colleagues. I think offering to pay for your own coffee would make you look a bit naive and unprofessional.

Post it without the postage paid and hope they will pay to get it delivered as they won’t know what is.

Tell them they can deduct the cost from your train fare and ask who you should send the invoice to.

I’m honestly wondering if this is some kind of mad ‘test’ and the person who replies correctly gets the job?! But what the answer is I have no idea

My Big pays expenses for out of town candidates, especially for juniors, nor do we do seven rounds of interviews which is frankly unnecessary and a huge waste of everyone's time and sounds like a job creation scheme for someone.

No way would I do 5 rounds of interviews for a job, 2 or 3 maybe but never 5, I think you've had a luck escape

Exactly this.

We have an additional screening interview done by HR/recruiter but that is checking basics such as eligibility to work, gaps in CVs, validating details, certs etc. Then the competency/technical interview, finally the director/practice lead interview. Nor do we have panels of thousands conducting the interviews.

This is plenty, mistaken hires are rare.

5 is not standard in my industry. 2 or 3 at the absolute most. If a company had the fucking nerve to suggest 7 (!) interviews before making an offer I would just laugh at them.

If a company can't make a judgement about a person after 2 or 3 interviews max then they are doing something wrong. It's just massively disrespectful towards candidates.

They sound awful! How did you respond? Ignore the them, they were being ridiculous.

Did they actually give the failure to pay or offer to pay for coffee as the reason you were rejected?

I was going to suggest this @ToeSucker or at least ask if they will reimburse you and if they say yes, say they can deduct it.

Stick 370 pennies in a Jiffy bag and post it without a stamp so that they have to pay for it! What tightwads.

From my personal experience, there's 2 (or 3 I guess) scenarios where I'd be interviewing for a job and I can't see the benefit to the employer of doing any more than 3 interviews. It certainly wouldn't improve the quality of the candidates that they were finally left with.

1. I've been contacted by a recruiter but am otherwise happy in my job - in this case they're going to really need to convince me that I want to take a risk and jump ship for them. After 2 interviews I'd be telling the recruiter to piss right off
2. I've had enough/am fed up/bored/grown to hate my current job - I'm going to have gussied up my CV and be sending it out to multiple companies. Sure, I'm going to be a bit more fussy since I currently have a job, but the first one(s) back with an offer that meets my renumeration expectations and seem like a nice bunch will be who I go with. I'm not hanging around for 7 interviews 'just in case'.
3. I have no job and I need one - As per 2, I'm sending out multiple CVs. I'm much less fussy as well in this case and I simply don't have the time or money to be hanging around for multiple interviews. First reasonable offer will likely be accepted.

So, as you can see, a 'good' candidate will rarely, if ever, make it to a 7th interview before being snapped up by someone else.

I also think that there's 2 types of company that do an excessive number of interviews; ones that want to look big and important but are actually just run by idiots or ones that are relying on sunk costs fallacy and are hoping to low-ball your offer, which you'll accept because you've put so much time and effort (and money, in OP's case) into actually getting to that stage!

Flipping Nora - don’t pay it.
Can you claim expenses - it seems a huge outlay for a job interview.

I have never had more than 1 interview for a job and would honestly not touch with a barge pole a company who thinks themselves that important to drag me around 5 times like a ragdoll around the country at my own expense and give me nasty setups in coffee shops to catch me out....