I applied for the job online via the company website and was contacted shortly after by an external recruiter. After a brief chat about my experience and interest in the role, they informed me that they would like to schedule an interview with the hiring manager for the next day. As I am currently employed, I was only able to block time at 9 am that day and waited for the hiring manager’s call for 20 minutes only to find out that the recruiter had messed up the time zones and communicated to the hiring manager and myself different times for the call. We agreed to reschedule for the following morning. I had a very good conversation with the hiring manager whom I found professional and very knowledgeable about the industry. Shortly after, I received an email from both the hiring manager and the recruiter that they would like to go further with my application.
The next step was an “on-site” series of interviews via Google Hangout, five in total, back-to-back (30-45 minutes each), no breaks in between, with a number of stakeholders from different departments: Product, Marketing, Engineering, Localization, HR. The interviews went fine for the most part, however, some interviewers left me with the impression that they had no knowledge of what this role entails or had little to do with the function itself.
The hiring manager responded to my thank you email promptly, promising to get back to me in a day or two. Then silence. After I followed up, I was asked to make time for another call. When I did, due to alleged technical issues, the call did not take place. I kindly asked for feedback over email but was advised that a call would be preferable. After I finally managed to talk to the recruiter again, I was told that a stakeholder I interviewed with thought that I was not able to offer enough guidance about localization, hence my application could not be processed any further. When probed for any more specific feedback, I was advised to wait another week or two. Apparently, this message could not be conveyed via email and required days of futile attempts at scheduling a call. What an utter waste of time!