Initially, the interview process started off normally with a phone interview then proceeded to a face to face interview. Phone interview was the standard one with interviewer asking questions related to work experience. No surprising questions like riddles and no cliche questions like what are your weaknesses. However, second interview felt like a consulting one with case like questions though the position was far from it.
Before the second interview though, they had already scheduled me for a face to face interview later in the week which was strange. But between the second and third interview, they wanted me to come in person to meet another person who could not be at the third interview, which I could not do due to work obligations and high inconvenience.
Then, finally at the third interview, the schedule was to meet three people. Yet one of them was not there so I had to do a conference call in a room by myself which was not what I expected. And the other person seemed very pressed for time and his thoughts were scattered. On top of that, his heavy accent which I understand since he obviously was not from the states was at least difficult for me to comprehend, and so, it did lead to an awkward conversation not to mention his in my opinion weaker than average social skills. There just was not enough time to ask questions leaving less than 30 minutes for the interview. I think both of us at the very least were shortchanged for an appropriate interview considering this was face to face and not a simple phone prescreen interview.
My word of advice is that interviews are two way evaluations and treat them as such. My evaluation was that things there at least the department I was interviewing for seemed disorganized and struck a lot of doubts inside of me whether I wanted to really work for that kind of group albeit a fairly new group. Overall, everybody was very pleasant, but the whole process including the interviews felt very poor and did not make most effective use of either party's time. Regardless, I think all parties including myself concluded on the right choice in that they did not extend me an offer, and I would have been very hesitant to leave my current job if I did get an offer.