Uncommon Goods Associate Buyer interview questions

The process at Uncommongoods included 1 small sourcing project to apply followed by two 30+ minute phone interviews, a larger sourcing project which included a presentation highlighting holes in the UG assortment, and 4 on-site interviews which were each about 40-60 minutes long. Meeting the merchandising team and working with the initial recruiter was a positive experience, but their onboarding process is most difficult I’ve come across in my job search, and the way I was treated afterward was by far the worst experience I have had in my career so far. The process is very demanding though the company does not seems to respect the time it takes to execute. My contact didn’t care to meet me prior to going into my on-sites, and I received little to no feedback on the products I presented. After being in the pipeline for 5 weeks and completing the on-site interview, I was advised it would take 2-3 days to get feedback. That ended up becoming 2 full weeks, and in between having follow ups ignored altogether. My contact ghosted me, essentially, until I was finally rejected via an email sent at 10:15pm full of typos. I don’t know if this contact thought that would save her from confronting me, but to receive that information in such a careless way was completely insulting. She did later apologize. I was tasked with the final stages of the process, which involved 2 weeks of prep and detailed sourcing and 4 hours off of my full time job, but was ultimately rejected because of my experience. I’ve been trying to understand why a company would ask so much of candidates just to ultimately resort back to what’s on paper, and information that was given from day one, in making their final decisions. For context, my background at the time was 3 years as an assistant buyer at a large specialty retailer, well in line with what I was told they were looking for to fill the role. To summarize, the process at UncommonGoods is far more work than it’s worth, and in choosing to go through it you run the risk of wasting a lot of valuable time on a company who really isn’t much different from the rest of them after all, arguably worse. If you’re someone looking to up-level, the company doesn’t seem to want to take a risk on you. I will definitely think twice before going through a process like this again.