I was referred by the Hiring Manager to recruitment after I messaged him regarding a LinkedIn post he made about the position. He had a recruiter reach out and she scheduled a phone screen. She did not call me at the scheduled time and I emailed her and asked if there was an issue and she rescheduled. She called me and after a quick discussion of my background-fully qualified-she said she was happy to pass me on to the next stage, which would be the final stage. I truly thought I had this in the bag bc of the HM referral, the need to hire for a specific background and time zone (which I met/had both) and the need to fill multiple seats bc of the new HR product launch. I was perfectly qualified, according to all of my next FOUR interviewers. The HM told me during the interview that we had perfect alignment. All told, I probably spent 10 hours prepping or meeting with the interviewers. The HM ghosted me after I sent a thank you email and I got an email rejection after prompting him once more for an update. Looking back I can see that the way the interviews were held shows distrust in the organization. I also feel there was a potential age bias present. There were people interviewing me that had only been working there for 4 months. That’s at least…interesting. They read from a script and one of my interviewers was in a coffee shop and I could barely hear him the whole time. At first I was upset about not getting an offer, but looking back and reading more here made me realize that I probably dodged a bullet bc hindsight being 20/20, the process was giving disorganized startup culture-which, for as long as they have been in business, should NOT be the case. I will say that everyone in the process was “nice” to me, but it leaves you feeling deceived when some of the things they said indicated that I would be hired and then you get an email instead of another “nice” conversation with a recruiter or the HM. I’d recommend that the executives understand that clear is kind and utilize some different approaches to show that they value people’s time and their own values that they ask you to talk about in each interview. I don’t appreciate ego and that was mentioned multiple times by the interviewers as well-that at Gusto, everyone leaves their ego at the door and embraces empathy. Apparently, that doesn’t hold completely true in the hiring process or at least it didn’t for me.