The recruiters originally contacted me to discuss a Senior role, but after meeting with the hiring manager I was surprised to be asked to interview for Director level instead. I have a unique background with years of very specific knowledge relevant to the company's line of business so I assumed they reviewed this internally and determined that it qualified me. I was very invested in the process and excited for an opportunity to possibly join at such an important leadership level of the organization. Overall they had me complete 8 hours of interviews and I met around a dozen people in the organization including members of the c-suite. They were fully aware that I was interviewing while employed and that it was a lot of effort to make arrangements so as not to put my current job at risk. The interviews ranged from intensive (some of the interviewers were very prepared) to awkward and unfocused where it didn't seem like they were taking it very seriously. The most lack luster interviews were at the top levels of the organization and I had to take the initiative to lead these conversations and basically interviewed myself. Despite this, throughout the entire process I had received very positive feedback via the recruiter and was told there was excitement for me to continue to move forward in the loop. During the middle of this process after I had already gone through about 4 hours of interviews, I received an invite for a 15 minute follow-up meeting with the hiring manager. I found it odd, but I completed the full loop as scheduled. What I discovered was that this 15 minutes was to inform me that a "mistake had been made" and I had not been intended to interview for the Director level. They admitted that they had not bothered to stop the interview process for the wrong position earlier because they were on PTO and apparently it had not been expected that I would have gotten so far in the loop. They then proceeded to tell me that there was already someone ear-marked for the role that had met with some c-suite and leadership already (makes sense now why they may not have put as much effort into meeting with me). At this point, I was very aggressively confronted to admit that my experience did not match this other candidate. My response was simply that they had seen my resume so they were aware of my experience. And I added that I had looked up the job description for the Director role and it did not mention years as a Director specifically as a requirement. The call continued and they tried to get me to "accept an apology on behalf of Pixelberry" despite their very obviously forced tone and clear lack of genuine care. I did not make any statements of acceptance, because it was not fair of them to ask me to do this or to put me under pressure when they had made a series of mistakes. Finally, in a surprise turn, they still apparently wanted me to bring me on as a Senior since my interviewers had been impressed with me throughout. At this point I was still processing everything, so I told them that while this experience did not paint the company in a very favorable light, if they could please send a written offer so that I could review more concrete details and get back to them. Three days later, all I received was a one sentence reply from recruiting - "We are sorry, but your salary is outside of the range we are able to accommodate." Interesting considering I had discussed my salary range for senior at the beginning of the process so this was clearly a hasty excuse to be done dealing with me. There was a tremendous amount of preparation, caring, and effort that was invested on my part and I feel very used. It seems that my interview loop was used to legitimize the position and keep up appearances of being in compliance with hiring practices in California and Washington. Considering everything they had put me through I would have expected a courtesy call at the very least. But this does not appear to be a reputable company, so I wanted to share my experience in the hopes that other applicants will know in advance that they may want to choose how much care they put into dealing with their recruitment team.