I went through 5 rounds of interviews with C-4, all with people at various levels of the organization. I blew through rounds 1-4 with flying colors and had great feedback every step of the way. For the final round, round 5, they asked me to conduct and present a digital audit of a company of my choosing. I very thoroughly conducted this audit, put it into a slide show presentation, and practiced for multiple days in preparation. In total, I invested about 10 hours of work into pulling the data, conducting a baseline analysis, writing my insights and recommendations, practicing, etc.. (Mind you, I do this all of the time in my current role so I know I did well). I presented it to 3 members of their team and felt like I handled all of the questions in the Q+A portion really well, only to be rejected 6 days later.
In total, I invested over 12 hours (yes, 12) into this interview process and was genuinely expecting an offer at the end of this. They told me they went with a candidate who they felt had experience that was "more in line with what they were looking for."
I replied to my rejection email expressing my surprise and and asked for specific feedback that I could use to better myself for future interviews, only to be completely ghosted.
I was obviously very let down by this whole thing. If they felt my experience was not what they needed, I don't know why they continued to waste my time. Could they not figure that out by round 2 or 3? Or surely before I invested over 10 hours in conducting and presenting an entire audit?
I will say that their HR team is professional and really on top of it, and they usually got back to me quickly. They clearly have a very fine-tuned hiring process (probably due to their high turnover rate from what I've seen on their Glassdoor account).
Overall the process was fine, but I do feel like they wasted my time and gave me a pretty crappy excuse as to why I didn't receive and offer. Also really dislike that they didn't even respond to my last email asking where I could improve.