Unfortunately, I felt a bit of a sour taste after the whole process was finished.
From the very first stage and throughout, there was an emphasis on Technical experience, espicially web development and the concepts involved. I was transparent about my coding skills; they weren't the best (however I had a very good background in troubleshooting, RCA, customer management and analysis of large data sets). As I progressed through each stage, I was assured that the interviewers just wanted to "see how I approached an issue" rather than display any sort of mastery over a programming language.
However as each stage progressed, it became more and more apparent, that they were indeed expecting quite a lot Technically. This became apparent at the final stage. I was prepped before this and again was told "it's not a coding challenge, we just want to see *how* you would tackle a problem, and present yourself to the customer". I was left alone in a room with a "simple computational algorithm" which to me was very difficult, and yes it was mostly writing coding solutions from scratch. I had a go at this, but I knew it was beyond my capabilities.
After all the false expectations about the requirements, it was finally apparent they wanted someone to "hit the ground running" for this role. I just don't understand why the couldn't have been more transparent about this from the start? I would have exited in the initial stages. Please don't tell me this was to meet some sort of internal KPI?
Whatever the case, an interview is a two way thing, both sides need to be open and honest about what is expected, this is courtesy and professionalism.
The above is unfortunate, because everything else was fine, the customer management "soft" questions where straightforward, and these questions did show people there that really love and care about what they do.
Overall, I'm glad I didn't get the role. The "hit the ground running" approach would have seen me expend hours and hours having to keep up with everyone or floundering; not worth it!