Phone screen with the external recruiter was typical. They took a long time to say whether or not they were going to have your proceed to the next step, which is a phone interview with the hiring manager. During the phone interview, the hiring manager asked generic questions and he interrupted a lot. It took a while again to hear back on next steps. Once they've decided to bring you in for in-person interviews, the recruiter steps away and their internal HR/recruiting group takes over. They have absolutely no idea what they're doing. Their recruiting coordinators kept telling me that I need to schedule my second round of phone interviews, which was incorrect, as I should have been scheduling my in-person interviews. They send multiple emails requesting availability, but then I didn't hear from them for a week and the time had passed, so then they would email me again for my availability. This repeated 3 times. The in-person interview with the hiring manager was a generic conversation, just like on the phone. The interviews with the team leads was more substantial, but it was clear their vision of the ideal candidate was completely different than the hiring manager. The hiring manager seemed very hands off. They were not clear about work/life balance, and kept trying to push unlimited PTO has a huge perk, but it was obvious that they expect their employees to work 60+ hours a week.

I was contacted through a recruiter on LinkedIn and decided to interview for the position. I met with the director and thought the chat went well. I heard the next day that they would like me to prepare for z panel interview - 6 people, 4.5 hours over two days. Totally fine, I thought I was going to have it in the bag, so I prepared for these interviews for close to ten hours, thinking about project management, quality, the SDLC, and learning as much as I could about systems design, despite not being an engineer. The recruiter prepped me by saying that the interview wasn't super technical but I should prepare to go over a design system. I found it odd since they knew I wasn't an engineer but they said it was fine. At the end of the interview process, I was feeling pretty good about things and asked for feedback at each chat. I received positive feedback and provided several specific examples to answer their questions. Come time to know if I got the offer, the recruiter basically ghosted me and I got an email reply stating that they were looking for someone with more specific examples and who was more seasoned. I found this to be quite surprising since I provided a plethora of examples and asked for any reason why I wouldn't be their top candidate in all 6 of my interviews. Honestly i think I dodged a bullet since they don't really seem consistent and it's obvious they didn't give me a chance to show them that I have what they're looking for. All good, I ended up getting a much better offer from another company shortly thereafter.