Pre-Note: I have spent my career for the past 9 years doing senior level TA work. The initial stages of this interview process were excellent. I was referred through a mutual connection to the TA Manager, and from that first screening call, things moved fast and felt right. She was knowledgeable, conversational, and gave me a clear picture of the team and role. Within 30 minutes of our call ending, I was on with a Senior Recruiter, and that conversation was solid. Thorough questions about my background, recruiting experience, and how I partner with hiring managers and their team. Everything clicked. I was invited on-site for the final round about a week later. The Operations Manager interview (35-40 min) was excellent. We covered my process end-to-end: how I work with hiring managers, run kickoffs, manage stakeholders, and coordinate across candidates, hiring managers, department heads, and team leadership. The best part was a hands-on LinkedIn Recruiter search exercise. I ran a search, pulled candidates they'd been trying to reach, plus several new high-quality prospects they hadn't seen before. It was relevant, practical, and showed real value. The Red Flag: The VP of People Operations was a different story. He seemed visibly annoyed to be interviewing. Questions came rapid-fire in a "gotcha" style rather than genuinely assessing experience or recruiting ability. He had me do whiteboarding exercises completely unrelated to the role. Throughout, it felt less like evaluation and more like gatekeeping for a "cool kids club." Bottom Line: Strong recruiting team. Solid interview structure from the TA Manager through the Ops Manager. But the final interviewer raised a major concern about leadership philosophy and company culture fit. Someone in that role should be evaluating recruiting capability, not running attitude tests. If this is the bar for HR leadership at this company, that's worth considering before accepting an offer. I also looked at his linkedin before and he has no HR/People Operations background but has been at the company hopping around different positions when the previous one doesn't work out, which lines up with the recent negative reviews from employees here on glassdoor.

I applied for a position, received an email, and then scheduled a brief call. Very little was asked and the conversation was very brief. Honestly it felt very perfunctory. I’m not sure if they decided they did not like me immediately at the start of the interview or if they never had any real interest to begin with.