I applied online. I interviewed at Gates Foundation in Aug 2020
Interview
I found the position on LinkedIn, applied to it and sent an inmail to the HR director who posted the position. A couple of weeks later the HR director reached out to me through inmail without even reading my previous message telling me that he came across my profile on LinkedIn and he thinks I am a good fit (I had the same job responsibilities in my current role but on a larger scale and had many years of experience in the same field)
I replied to him, he responded a week or so later asking to schedule a zoom interview.
The zoom interview was so unprofessional. I was dressed business casual for the interview while he showed up wearing a flea t-shirt and baseball hat. He had some family moving in his background all the time. He wasn't really concentrating with the discussion. His questions weren't technical of course because he was just an HR guy, but you can't tell the direction of the questions. It felt like he is just asking random questions. As I was out of the state, he told me that they have a relocation package and offered to give more details but we were running out of time so I told him I have some questions that I think it will be better to invest the time left on them.
He concluded the interview by telling me that he will talk with the hiring manager and get back to me in 4 days. 18 days later I sent him a follow-up email to see how the discussions with the hiring manager went.
He replied a week later telling me that they can't afford the relocation cost and decided to move forward with a local candidate. I told him I wasn't even looking for a relocation reimbursement and reminded him that I told him so during the interview but, of course, he never responded.
Obviously, this wasn't the real reason! And obviously it wasn't a technical reason.. I think their reason is something they can't tell me about. My guessing is that it was something about favoritism or special connections.
Bottom line: unprofessional, unpunctual and nontransparent. The name is big but it is definitely misleading.