Easily one of the worst experiences I've ever had applying for a job. I spent hours preparing and interviewing and in the end I got jerked around for no good reason. The entire interview process took place over a week and a half on three separate days. The first day, I had a 45 minute phone screening, which consisted of fairly basic interview questions. Another day I had a panel interview over the phone, which lasted about an hour with some light technical questions. On the last day, I had a 2.5 hour marathon interview via Skype consisting of two panels followed by a remote technical assessment. Everything went well, I felt I had good shot at the position. A few days went by and I was contacted for a background check and drug screening. Seemed promising. I provided my info, and asked a couple of follow-up questions about logistics. No reply from HR. Another day goes and I get a call that I hadn't gotten the position due to a decision being made "earlier than expected". When I asked for a simple reason, considering things had been moving full-speed ahead, the contact hemmed and hawed, and sounded extremely nervous, but really gave no reason at all. I then got an email with the boiler-plate corporate speak of "Things within our timeline changed and we were able to come to a final decision earlier than we expected". Still not a real answer but, ok. I wrote back asking for an actual reason and they replied that they ended up going with another candidate. If they found a better fit, fine, just come out and say so. Don't jerk people around when it comes to their livelihood.