EtaGen has a fantastic mission and technology. The company claims that they will cover all of your traveling costs (flight, ground transport, food, and hotel). They ended up not covering $511 of my travel costs (this situation and my interview process is explained below). There is a huge lack of communication between the HR team internally and with the hiring teams. There are some major red flags for this company that you should lookout for.
After my two online applications for a Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineer positions, I got approached by a recruiter for a phone interview through email. The call consisted of my expectation for salary, basic company background and how EtaGen will be covering all expenses if they decide to have an onsite interview.
After not hearing back for over 1 month, I contacted the recruiter for a followup for the manufacturing Engineer position. The recruiter finally put me in contact with the head of Mechanical Engineering for an interview. I expressed my concern to her that I am more interested in the Manufacturing position, and here response was that that interview will be a general screening used for any position. I sent her my updated resume/portfolio, both of which they never made their way to the head of mechanical engineering for the day of my Skype interview. The interview took around 2.5 hours. Problems around mechanics of materials, work/energy questions, and details of projects in my resume and portfolio (that I had to email over during my interview, a good 15 minutes was wasted around this). At the end of the interview I expressed my interest in manufacturing engineering position, as no questions were around manufacturing. He was shocked that we just spent 2.5 hours around mechanical questions and said he was told by the recruiter that I am only interested in the mechanical engineering position. After some apologies he said he will get me in contact with the head of manufacturing to start the right interview process…
My next Skype interview was with the head of manufacturing for about 1 hour speaking about my interests, basic operations and manufacturing. We then agreed on a date for an onsite interview in the Bay Area. I had 2 other interviews back to back with 2 other companies in the Bay Area and luckily I was able to schedule this after the other 2.
The onsite interview consisted of 4 interviews. First with the head recruiter, we talked about EtaGen’s technology, future, and pay/benefits. Really enjoyed this conversation. This was followed by an interview with the head of manufacturing around my resume/portfolio and some engineering problems on the whiteboard. Really positive feedback and fairly easy questions. My third and and fourth interview was with the only 2 engineers under the head of manufacturing and these were by far the most positive interview feedback I had ever received in my career. To a point that they confirmed that I nailed it and they are looking forward to working with me and that there shouldn’t be a reason why I woudnt move forward to the next stage, if there is even a need for one…. they said they will confirm with their boss and let me know.
As I was waiting for my Uber the head of manufacturing came out to say goodbye and during our conversation mentioned that he is looking for someone with 2-5 years of experience… this was really confusing to me as I am a fresh graduate and wasn’t sure why he was telling me that. 2 days later I received an email from him stating that they were really impressed with my potential for growth and motivation but they need someone with industry experiment that can succeed right away and there is not much room for mentorship. He said that he had put forward a great recommendation for me to Tesla…. I could not believe this…. I even received an apology text from one of the engineers under him about the situation… this is a huge red flag!
As a cherry on top of this confusion, after sending over my reimbursement to EtaGen, for items that weren’t covered by the other companies I interviewed with (Food, a flight upgrade and some of my ground transport), I received an email that only the ground transport, food and, a domestic flight for the day of my interview with EtaGen will be covered. I traveled from the UK for this interview. The recruiter was extremely unprofessional in her communication with me and gave me a selective list of items that the company is willing to cover…. They did not have to cover my hotel, and base international flight as they were covered by the other companies. This was over $1800 that they got away with from what they promised EtaGen covers. Our agreement was to cover the remaining of my costs which they deny to cover as there is nothing in writing… the funny thing is, no agreement over email was ever sent by her to me…. This was purely over the phone conversation… so please ensure to get this in writing if you are planning for an onsite interview!
