I was approached by a third party recruiter. The process started on 25th Sep and after the 2nd level of interview, no status was given for 2 weeks till 15th Oct. I did reach out to them twice for the status and since there was no reply, I directly shared my feedback on the hiring process with the Senior Leadership. A day after, I got a call from Talent Acquisition stating that to close the loop he is informing me that they are going forward with another candidate. I would have appreciated a lot if this status was shared soon after the interview itself rather than making a candidate wait for so long for no particular reason. Still didn't get the written feedback on the reason for the rejection. Though I got to know from the Recruiter that the TA didn't like me reaching out to the Senior Leadership. It's always good to share the feedback in a positive tone. My feedback was more on my experience with the hiring process and my suggestion on the same. Unfortunately, it was considered as escalation. Since EA role requires a lot of honesty when it comes to giving the feedback or making a process better, I'd have appreciated if they had sent one-liner mail to me stating that "the process is still in progress" or "we are moving forward with another candidate" on my follow-up email. Apart from the role and responsibilities, the only thing which excited me about the firm was the open-door policy. However, after having such an experience where people don’t take the feedback constructively, I believe that the open-door policy is just a marketing gimmick.