I feel like I have to state that the interview process was not conducted in a professional manner and
left me with a really bad feeling.
I'm no stranger to interviewing as a candidate and as an interviewer.
The position I was approached with was "leading the R&D" via linkedin and after looking in my profile, 4 phone calls and 2 reference calls,
zero flags were raised regarding my "lack of managerial experience". I was under the impression that I fitted the position in terms of knowledge and experience.
After the HR interview(was scheduled AFTER talking to my 2 references), the CEO had emailed me and stated that you would like to "move forward".
Only on the call, I found out that I don't fit the position experience with no warnings. A better choice of words might have been, "would like to discuss a few things *before* moving forward".
I was offered with a significantly changed scope of responsibilities from "leading R&D" to "in charge of data scraping" or "head of automation". It appears that I was the right DNA for the company but I was not fit for a managerial position, according to them.
This has happened to me only once before and the person I was talking to mentioned that I had lacked experience for the position in the first 5 minutes of the call without wasting anymore of my time.
I think it's bad practice and not professional to contact a candidate for one position and offer him/her with a much lower scope of responsibilities.