The process began with a phone call to learn more about the position and the organization and to share a bit about myself. From there, an official phone screening (which was not really a phone screening, it was a Zoom meeting) was scheduled. After that, I was scheduled for a 2.5 hour panel interview and was asked to do a hiring exercise in which I had to provide a solution to a particular problem. The instructions on the exercise were to spend no more than three hours on it, but I don’t see how anyone could do less than 6-8 hours. Normally, I don’t provide free solutions/trainings/labor/etc during the interview process but I felt confident that being this far was a good sign and I learned a lot along the way. So I submitted the exercise (which you are given 72 hours to complete). I thought that I would be presenting my work, but it was barely even asked about during the interview. The interview was broken into segments to meet with different members of the team and while everyone was lovely, no one asked about my experience. It was a very “tell us what you would do about xyz” type of interview with several folks. After the most rigorous interview process I’ve ever been through, over the span of 3 months (plus a month of radio silence after the panel interview) I got the cold, automated email of death saying they went forward with other candidates.