The interview process was supposed to be 4/5 rounds. First with the recruiter, then with the hiring manager, then a case study and presentation with an extended team member, and a final interview. Everything was going well until I was told that I did not pass the presentation of the case study even though the feedback I received during the presentation was great! I answered the couple of ad hoc questions there were with easy, and talked through my case study answers. The feedback in the moment was great the entire time. I then reached out to the recruiter for feedback and she mentioned that my answers didn’t align with what was written and presented even though everything was read exactly as written. It was a lot of mixed signals between in the moment feedback to the feedback afterwards. Also the presentation side was unclear so I went with my own structure not knowing they were looking for another structure. I enjoyed my both of my interviews and was very shocked to not move on. I think the team needs to be more clear on what they are expecting in the presentation round; do you want it to be conversational or more structured? If so, state that so applicants are aware of how to approach it.

The process started reasonably well but ended feeling disconnected from how it actually went. After an initial screen, I was asked to complete a substantial take-home case study — drafting full customer support responses across live chat and email scenarios — which took several hours to do properly and was due within 3 working days. The live interview that followed the case study went well by any normal read of an interview: the interviewer specifically praised the presentation and said she liked seeing different candidates approach the same problem differently, and we had a genuine back-and-forth about how each of us would prioritize a multi-issue scenario, with no indication that my approach was seen as a weaker one. Despite that, I received a generic rejection shortly after with no specific feedback, and no real acknowledgment of the level of effort the case study required. If a candidate has put in several hours of unpaid work on a detailed case study and the interview itself goes well, it would go a long way to get even brief, specific feedback on the actual decision rather than a template email. As it stands, the amount of candidate effort asked for relative to the communication received back feels imbalanced. Advice to management: If the take-home case study is going to require this much time from candidates, consider giving specific feedback on why a decision went the way it did, especially when the live interview appeared to go well. It would also help to be transparent earlier in the process about how heavily the case study round versus the live interview actually factors into the final decision.