The interview process with airfocus was smooth and straightforward. It started with three calls—first with HR, then with the hiring manager, after which I was given a case study to complete. The final step was a meeting to present and discuss the case study. Everyone I interacted with was super friendly and easygoing, and the case study itself was a standard task aligned with the role’s requirements. The process wrapped up with a final meeting to meet the team.

The interview process was composed of four steps: 1) Meet with the talent acquisition team (truthfully, a pleasure to talk to while making themself open and available for any questions along the way – this was honestly the highlight of my whole experience with airfocus ) 2) Meet with the hiring manager 3) Complete a test task and 4) Present the test task (they emphasize they like visuals when sending you this, so, hint hint, fire up PowerPoint or Google Slides or don't bother moving forward) to the hiring manager as well as a few other team members. Their test task, the questions for which are posted below and had "estimated time: 1 hour" included in its description, most certainly DID NOT take 1 hour. If you as a candidate spent one hour on this multi-part assignment, the end results would suck and you wouldn't get the job, plain and simple. I spent around 8 hours on it, not counting any other research for the other interviews that I did along the way. Additionally, the role was advertised and categorized as entry-level when it was posted and it was clearly written in the job description that the candidate they're looking for has "Basic understanding of B2B SaaS marketing best practices." Rejecting a candidate because "we're looking for someone who already has B2B SaaS experience" with no other feedback through a generically written email is pretty low. They could have said that at the first interview with the hiring manager instead of making me waste all that time (that I could have spent applying elsewhere, for example) and ultimately leaving me with a bad taste in my mouth. The state of modern recruitment is already so bleak. It's hyper competitive, cruel, increasingly dehumanizing and requires sinking many hours into these stupid homework assignments just to even have a chance. We're human beings that need work and money in order to exist on this planet. I can't feed my family with unpaid test tasks and this one, as well as the generic rejection I got, made me feel lied to. I thought this company, based on all its positive reviews and their really personable talent acquisition lead, would be better than the slog we as candidates already have to endure just to find a job. Apparently, at least in the case of this particular role, it's not.