Buckle up. The process is old school and takes forever if it’s a leadership role, even at the team lead level. Pretty sure it was created 20+ years ago in a market when people were begging for jobs. With the “Great Resignation”, this is broken and needs to evolve. Self esteem killer. I spent 7+ hours in interviews. First, the pros. Very smart and kind people. The interview questions were solid. This isn’t a bad company, and I can see how it’s probably a great place to work if you can withstand the process. Most of middle management are in their early 30s that were promoted from within. That said, they know their stuff so were clearly trained well, and even though I had more work experience than most of them, I still felt like I could learn from them and maybe they could learn for me. So…here goes. Cons…so many cons…but please note that rejection always stings and take my feedback with a grain of salt. I will TRY to focus on facts. They recruited me, and I have a good job at a good company, yet I was treated as if I NEEDED THEM throughout the long, broken, old school process. It started with the sourcing recruiter, then the product marketing recruiter, then the hiring manager. After that, I met with 3 stakeholders holders and 1 values interviewer (all best practices). I was told all the feedback was positive and they wanted me to interview with the small team I’d lead, 3 individual interviews. At that point, I was all-in so it was worth the extra 3 interviews to meet my team. The marketers were fabulous and I saw exactly how I could lead them toward their goals. Again, I was told all the feedback was very positive in this round. I’m exhausted at this point, but I kept thinking it will be worth it because it’s going well. Mistake. In the process, I interviewed with another company (4 interviews) and got an offer. When I shared this information, they made no attempt to escalate the process out of respect for me or in the interest of retaining my candidacy. This honestly felt like a slap in the face because I’ve given them so much of my time at this point and demonstrated a lot of patience and grace towards them. Instead, they congratulated me for the other offer and told me their timeline and process isn’t changing. This is a bad practice, and THIS is when I should withdrawn my candidacy. It’s a job seekers market. I can’t even imagine how much key talent they must lose because of this process. It all seriously was starting to look like mind games and manipulation. Again, perceptions are not always reality, and I was rejected so it still stings. Grain of salt. Then, I had to re-sync with the recruiter, re-interview with the hiring manager, and then interview with the VP. Then, I had to wait a week for them to “debrief” and “contemplate” for 48 hours for a decision. No one ever told me this was part of the process. At this point, I’m feeling like this is hazing and mind games to try to get into their posh sorority and got frustrated, but I’m a big girl so I held it back. I was told the only thing that came up was my years of experience managing. Huh? This is when I withdrew my candidacy because I met the minimum qualifications from the start and this isn’t a director or VP role, it’s a TEAM LEAD. If my leadership experience is in question a month and a half later at the 11th hour, CLEARLY this is not the right fit. But the recruiter convinced me the “team didn’t want to lose me”, so like an idiot I stayed in and waited, AGAIN. And she is very good at her job and pulled out all the stops. She even said there’s no promises but because the feedback was so good she thinks it will end favorable. And of course I’ve been through so much at this point I keep thinking it will all be worth it. And then…no offer. For me, this was a self esteem killer and massive waste of time considering the outcome. For you, it may be different. My advice to any seekers is to make sure they understand not only the process but also how long it could take. Also, ask a lot of questions because you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. They usually don’t give a lot of time for this and it’s at the end of the interview. My advice to Atlassian is that they need to update their hiring process because it has old and broken. This is not how companies are recruiting top talent post pandemic. There are a lot of companies out there that have amazing culture and they protect their culture in interviews by interviewing for or five times successfully, without emotionally draining their candidates. Doing it the way you have it set up is really disrespectful to a candidate. You are kind and smart people, so I don’t think this is your intention. However, this was my experience and my perception. Please do better. I know you can