The startup promised to reimburse her travel. A friend bought the ticket: a round trip from Uttar Pradesh to Bengaluru. She packed for an overnight stay, prepared for the final round, and arrived on time. The interview went well enough. She flew home. Then silence.
No offer letter. No polite rejection. No reply to her follow-ups. The promised travel reimbursement never appeared either. The friend who had paid for the ticket posted about the experience on Reddit, where r/IndianWorkplace lit up with similar stories: candidates travelling across states for in-person interviews only to be discarded the moment they walked out the door.
The post did not name the company. But it captured something depressingly familiar: a startup that treated a final interview as a vibe check rather than a commitment, and a candidate who paid real money for the privilege of being ignored.