I applied online and was contacted by HR a few weeks later. Initial phone screen was pretty standard/simple - asked about my background and interest in the field. I sent in a writing sample and a few days later was invited for an in person interview. I interviewed with the project lead first then met with two other people familiar with the project, afterwards I completed a work sample test, which was pretty easy - basic actions in Excel and SPSS. The whole thing took about 2.5 hours. The first person I interviewed with was pleasant and fairly straightforward - I was asked regular questions (similar to what I was asked by HR). The second interview was a bit harder - one of the interviewers was very demanding and grilled me more harshly than the first person. The interviewer was sitting fairly close to me so I could see the notes they were taking on my responses and there was a ton of red X's and downward facing arrows - seeing those red marks was not a confidence booster and I started to get really nervous when trying to answer questions after that. Based on the aggressive questioning and the negative note-taking, I got the impression that I was out of the running. Two days later HR contacted me to let me know that I was one of a few finalists and that the next step was a reference check. I wasn't super excited about the idea of having them call my references without a formal or informal offer on the table but I gave them anyways. HR said I would hear back about the decision after the reference check. I never heard anything from them after that - not even a rejection email.