I was referred to Splunk by a current employee. The recruiter reached out to me the same day to schedule an initial call. Following the initial call, they quickly scheduled three additional interviews including one with the hiring manager. One of the interviews was technical in nature, but it was not too challenging. It consisted of simple Linux questions. The process continued with a 1-hour on-site panel interview, which consisted of me presenting Splunk (sales pitch and product demonstration). I had about a week to prepare for the interview. I thought the timeline was extremely compressed considering I have a real job with at least 10-hour work days and a family with kids. I ended up asking for an additional week, because I had a work emergency that prevented me from spending any time to prepare. The hiring manager understood, and he/she honored my request. The panel interview itself wasn’t hard. However, as I mentioned above, I had a short period of time to learn Splunk enough to pitch it and prepare a custom demo. I have been through similar processes. In those instances, I was asked to do a demo of a product that I was already familiar with. After all, I believe the main purpose of such interviews is to evaluate my presentation skills. The product shouldn’t matter. Either way, it was what it was. They ended up moving forward with a different candidate who already had plenty of Splunk experience. However, they said they were impressed with me and wanted me to talk to a different team. They schedule three additional interviews, including the hiring manager for this team. My last interview was with the Account Executive, who, during the interview, told me that I didn’t have enough experience with the client I would be working with. I had never claimed I did, and they knew that from the beginning. It made absolutely no sense for them to have me take 3 additional hours out of my busy schedule to tell me something that they and I already knew and effectively end the recruitment process. After the call, I withdrew from the process. Part of the reason was my frustration with the process and other part was my assessment that they were probably going to end the process from their end. I spent at least 5.5 hours in interviews not including the many more hours I spent preparing, coordinating, and traveling. I do understand that the process requires commitment from both parties. However it is frustrating to end the process feeling like I have wasted all that time.