Process started off fine. I reached out to a recruiter who had ghosted me about 5 months previously regarding a similar role. Guy responded quickly this time, and we set up a screening followed by an interview with the hiring manager. The hiring manager had a very similar path as my own - was a high performing individual contributor, built out a scalable SMB onboarding and customer success program, and with its success ascended to managing the team and department she effectively built. I was pumped to collaborate with her.
After my phone interview with her, we set up a 3 hour, 5 person interview at their office.
All the interviewers seemed thoughtful, AND it looked like they read my resume beforehand.
A couple of them had notebooks with them with prewritten questions, and where they would take notes. The others did not. I seemed to have received positive feedback from each member during the interviews, each ended their session with me saying that they have no concerns with me in the role. So far so good. I asked about when I should hear back, they said they were shooting to have someone start in 3 weeks.
After the interview I wrote each of them a thank you email, to which only one person replied any acknowledgement. Two weeks of silence goes by.
For the next two weeks I would jump every time my phone vibrated, hoping for the good word, or any word really. I reached out to the hiring manager after 2 weeks of silence, asking if they have any questions, or is there anything I can do to expedite the process? Still nothing.
I reached out again, this time to all 5 interviewers, another 2 weeks later (so a month after my final interview, a week after their target start date). This time the recruiter who originally ghosted me but then helped to set to organize this interview replied back, saying that they're "going in another direction" which told me exactly nothing. I dug deeper, and was ultimately told that they wanted to hire someone with more management experience for this role, which I don't think is true.
1. The last person to have this role herself had less mgmt than I did when I applied, so it's obviously not a sine qua non.
2. All my xp was known to the members prior to my final interview (from my resume and phone interviews). If it was really a deal breaker, why even call me in?
Overall, I thought the people seemed cool, driven, capable. The office was nice, great views, good location. It could have been a positive experience if I weren't ghosted and then, I suspect, lied to. After the last interview it was like a switch clicked, and all I got was evasive reticence.
I'll probably never know what happened. If the company just dropped the ball this one time, and it's not normally how they acquire talent. Or if they changed their mind about what they needed after I already interviewed. Or if it could have simply been personal, maybe just didn't impress them or give off a positive vibe.
TLDR: Process went well when they wanted it to. Ghosted and dropped like a rock, left for a month to wait for an email back. Thanked all 5 interviewers for their time and asked for feedback, got nothing back except a vague email from the recruiter that contradicted all the interviews.
