The process from start to finish took a month and a half, I applied June 11th and today I finally received an email saying that the company is going a different route. We communicated through countless emails, two phone interviews and a 60 min interview that consisted of two individual 30 min panel interviews with different people.
After waiting almost a week after the in person interview I was emailed an application, authorization form and a assessment to fill out. I was asked to email out references that day so they could contact them ASAP. After doing some research I found out that none of my references where ever contacted. The company many times said they would contact me with information on a specific date, they would then not send anything anywhere from a few days or a week after they said they would. It was an extremely long and frustrating process with me contacting them several times to follow up after missed deadlines.
I wouldn't have thought much, and would have attributed the problems with communication to their staffing and them being busy, but all said and done I don't think that was the issue. At the time I was being patient, as they really did make it sound like a good place to work. It was also communicated several times to me that they liked me and wanted to hire me, in the end I'm unsure what the motive was but at the time I was excited as I felt I found a good place to work. I can only speculate that they either don't know how to tell someone that they don't want to hire them, they have differing opinions on who to hire from leadership and HR, or they clearly don't know what they want. They also mentioned if they didn't hire me they would be going with a temp agency, so maybe that was their motive all along, save money and the hassle of hiring. The email of them going a different route makes me think that they're going with a temp, but maybe a few factors played into it.
Its interesting to note that another person reviewed an interview with very similar results as me only a few days ago.