[tl;dr: Sr. Leadership Core Values misalignment outweighs the votes of 10+ people]
Over the course of 4 months and 12 interviews, I got to know the amazing Marketing team at BetterUp and had a wonderful initial process, but it ultimately didn’t work out due to a negative experience with the final interviewer, which is indicative of a bigger and more duplicitous cultural issue.
2 months (and 8 interviews) into the process, the role I initially interviewed for was put on pause. However, the team explicitly said they wanted to co-create a role just for me and that no one else would interview for it—so I moved forward.
At this point, I’d invested 3 months and hours of interview prep for the process for nothing on my end. When asked what the interview process would look like for the new role, I was told there’d be 4 more interviews (mind you, a standard interview process lasts 2 months and typically involves 3-4 interview stages MAX).
By the 11th interview (now 4 months in), I received positive feedback: "the team 100% unanimously would love to move forward to the final round interview! (Like it's a no-brainer for everyone.)" In my final interview with senior leadership, the interviewer pushed back against my story of failure and asked me to give a "better" answer twice before ultimately moving on to the next question. I'd been asked this question before by their colleagues, and no one disregarded my story; contrarily, they responded that my story was an embodiment of BetterUp’s core mission and that they appreciated my vulnerability in sharing. It should be noted that I have cultural and grief trauma associated with failure. I should not have to unpack personal layers of guilt and shame in an interview process, especially at this late stage, to be viewed as a viable candidate for this role. I felt gaslit, unheard, and frustrated that my personal narrative was unacceptable for this interviewer because it did not fit another their definition. I also did not appreciate being cut off when I did start to offer other alternatives that did perhaps better suit their definition of failure.
I did not get the job because the final interviewer was "worried I could not fail forward/upward at the pace that the startup was going." BetterUp presented itself as a collaborative and supportive work culture that nurtured career and personal growth. I deeply believe that the 10 folks I met in the Marketing Department embody that mindset, and I would have loved to work with them. However, at the end of the day, if one senior leader to whom this role would NEVER report had the ability to outweigh 10 other votes, then there is a problem with both this process and the company at large, and that's not something I want to be a part of. Ironically, in the eyes of the interviewer, this could have been a "failure" story. However, seeing as I've learned greatly from this experience and know my worth and value far exceed the outcome that one person's misguided assumptions influenced upon this entire process, I don't view it as a failure but rather a successful lesson learned for personal and career growth. And I suppose therein lies the problem~