The people I met throughout the process were kind, professional, and genuinely welcoming. I had several strong conversations with members of the Customer Success organization and initially came away extremely excited about both the opportunity and the company itself. Unfortunately, the overall interview experience ultimately became frustrating, emotionally exhausting, and difficult to make sense of given how the process unfolded. I originally went through an extensive multi-round interview process for a Customer Success Manager role, including multiple interviews and a presentation round. After not being selected for that role, I was immediately encouraged to continue interviewing for a Customer Success Associate opportunity because, as it was explained to me directly, I had been a “top top candidate,” the team’s experience with me had been “extremely positive,” and they did not want to “lose” a strong candidate. I was specifically told they like to keep strong candidates “in their back pocket” when opportunities open up. During my conversation with the hiring manager for the CSA role, we discussed the structure of the Tier 3 team in depth, including the pooled support model, shared queue structure, high-volume environment, automation-focused workflows, and the balance between reactive support and strategic customer engagement. We also discussed my prior experience extensively, including my background managing customer portfolios, building onboarding and lifecycle processes in startup environments, working autonomously, handling high-volume customer work, and creating operational structure in lean teams. At multiple points during that conversation, I was directly told that my background, work style, and personality aligned with what they were looking for on the team. I was told my experience creating processes, identifying operational gaps, and taking initiative was “what success looks like in this role.” I was also told the team wanted to move me forward “as quickly as we can” into the next round because they were “really, really interested” in me as a candidate. Naturally, after hearing that level of encouragement following an already extensive interview process, I believed the company was genuinely serious about finding a place for me within the organization. Compensation, benefits, growth opportunities, and long-term career paths within the company were openly discussed, further reinforcing that impression. After another round of interviews, I was ultimately told the role “would not be the best fit long term” because the pooled Tier 3 Customer Success structure supposedly did not align with my strengths as much as a more structured territory and client-management model. What made this difficult to process was that none of that information was new. My background, work style, strengths, and approach to Customer Success had already been discussed extensively throughout the original multi-round interview process and again throughout the CSA conversations before I was rerouted into another opportunity. In fact, many of the very strengths later cited as reasons I was “better suited” elsewhere were specifically praised throughout the process and framed as valuable to the Tier 3 team itself and by the hiring manager. Additionally, this was strange to me, as the company specifically invited me to discuss this role with them—I did not apply for it. By the time the second rejection came, it honestly felt less like a new realization and more like a conclusion that should have been reached much earlier, before asking a candidate to reinvest additional time, preparation, and emotional energy into another interview cycle. In a difficult job market, candidates are not just investing time into these processes. They are investing hope, emotional energy, and often reorganizing parts of their lives around opportunities they are being actively encouraged to pursue., Being rerouted into another process, repeatedly told you are a top candidate and moved through additional interview rounds naturally creates a significant level of optimism and expectation. Again, everyone I interacted with was thoughtful and professional, and I do believe the people involved had good intentions. However, from a candidate experience standpoint, this process ultimately felt unnecessarily prolonged, emotionally draining, and avoidably disappointing given the rationale that was eventually provided.