A total of 6 rounds covering topics like understanding your work, completing a take home assignment, Data Science Fundamentals, ML/AI fundamentals, System design and behavioral questions.
Everything went well and cleared everything. Positive interactions with interview panel and recruiter, but no offer after dragging me along for 4-5 months with constant feedback like "you did well, it's just stuck at XYZ. Sit tight" and "you did well, but you lack XYZ, therefore we are interviewing more people"
Should've known better and walked away emotionally at that stage. However, I really liked the team, the way they communicated, really felt like a collaborative effort. I prepared to the best of my abilities and worked really hard, but I walked away with empty promises and just an complete disrespect of my time and value.
If after 6 rounds and 4-5 months, you still cannot trust your own interview process, so much so that you're still looking for someone to fill in for that role as of writing this, maybe you should first fix your process before you begin "expanding in India" You guys couldn't even send a formal rejection and resorted to ghosting after you explicitly stated that you don't ghost in multiple occasions? Real low.
Interview experience - 5/5 because of the people on the interview panel, recruiter and the amazing nature of work that I could infer from talking to them.
Company outlook - 0/5 since you don't even know what you're looking for. Rejection was never a problem, just the way you did it was.