The interview process was incredibly long and unprofessional. Once I applied, I was asked to submit additional answers to a questionnaire they had. After I submitted my answers, it took about a month before they reached out and said that they wanted to schedule an interview. I interviewed with several other team members at Loyal and while I thought they were polite, there were some yellow flags that I kept spotting. For the role I interviewed for, they were insistent that the designer set the requirements for the product - something that the product owner or manager should be doing. Can a designer collaborate and provide input and argue for the best user experience? Of course, that's the point of collaboration. But why have a PM if the designer is expected to do all of the work to begin with? It was very bizarre. It became clear that we did not fit, which is perfectly ok. I didn't hear a response after those interviews, but had already chalked it up as a bad fit and moved on. Two weeks after that, I received an email asking if I had heard back from the team. I said no. We set up a call. On the call they said that they had decided not to move forward with me. Again, perfectly fine and I had assumed as much already. Theythen gave the cliche "if there's ever another position open, you should apply" sort of spiel and I gave the canned "yes, of course, thank you." Most hiring managers/team members will sanitize and provide the feedback in a polite, professional way. Instead, it was like they couldn't stop putting their foot in their mouth and began reading direct transcripts of what the team had sent via Slack. I was told that I had applied for a position that was above my experience level, that I am actually entry level, and shouldn't be applying for anything mid-level or beyond. Yikes. The ironic part is that I was offered a senior level position from a different company two weeks later. Go figure.

First, I filled out an 8-question Screening Questionnaire. Then, I was moved onto the Recruiter Screening, which was basically a repeat of the Screening Questionnaire. After that, I was moved onto the Hiring Manager Interview. Everyone I spoke to was nice enough, but they seemed to keep emphasizing how difficult and unpleasant it is to work here. Also, I kept answering the same questions again and again, which made me feel like it was more of an interrogation than an interview. There were multiple points where I wanted to be like "Omg...You called ME for an interview! What gives you the right to act so suspicious?!" Halfway through the HM interview, I kind of disassociated and felt this overwhelming sense of "Wtf am I doing with my life? Why do I keep putting myself through these interviews knowing that, best case scenario, I will end up in a terrible, invalidating environment 90% of the time?" The process of interviewing here was so bleak that I literally have reevaluated my entire life. A 6-figure paycheck is really not worth this. Nice people, but the overall vibes were weird.