I was cold-contacted through my Indeed profile by a recruiter with a fairly typical "We found your resume on ..." looking for a 100% remote Technical Policy Writer. After expressing interest, I had a initial phone call with the recruiter, who asked a series of templated questions about technical policy writing in cybersecurity. Although I lacked explicit answers to many of the recruiters questions, the recruiter told me I would be passed on to a technical interview, as the answers I gave had sufficient depth, when combined with my resume (I have worked in cybersecurity for over 10 years, primarily in compliance). The technical interview was on Teams, with a group of interviewers. Early in the interview, the Technical Writing interviewer passed me over to the Cybersecurity Compliance lead to interview, as it became obvious I was much more qualified for positions in that area. The compliance interviewer asked me a number of questions about NIST, FISMA, A&A tool experience, and general cybersecurity compliance knowledge, in a very unscripted and natural conversation. I was told Zermount was very interested, but there was a 6 week suitability process which had to occur before I could receive a job offer. This is where the process derails. I patiently waited 6 weeks for further contact, but heard nothing from Zermount. Since I was interested in the position, I reached back out to the recruiter, only to find out that NOTHING had occurred. Ouch. As I was still interested, I asked the recruiter to restart the process. I went through another technical interview, as the compliance lead had left the company in the interim (not a good sign, but that 100% remote was good bait, as was the potential to return to cybersecurity). In this round of the interview process, I went through a technical interview where I was again shifted from a Policy Writer interview to Cybersecurity Compliance. After that interview, I contacted the recruiter by mail or phone every week until I got to the one-on-one interview with the Deputy Program Manager. The dPM was concerned about the time zone difference between the location of performance and my remote site (East Coast v. West Coast), but I mentioned I had worked the early shift at my (then) current position, so the early mornings weren't an issue for me. Following that interview I received a offer, contingent on completing a suitability review from the government agency with whom Zermount held a contract for cybersecurity compliance. That process took about 3 weeks (HR indicated it could take between 2-6 weeks). After suitability, Zermount placed a request for a government agency identification card (the agency uses the card as MFA for access to the agency's network). That process took about a week. After that, Zermount was able to order an agency-provided laptop for delivery to the government agency facility nearest me (the nearest location was, unfortunately, a 3 hour drive from my location). Because I insisted I needed to give two-weeks notice to my former employer (and despite HR pressing me to start work earlier), I was not able to start working in the position until two weeks after I received an appointment to pick up the agency laptop. Finally, I discovered, during the onboarding process, that most of the insurance benefits listed in the contingent offer required a significant amount of personal funds (this differed greatly from my previous experience with a DC-based government contractor), and the matched contributions to the company's 401(k) were unavailable to me until after a 90-day probationary period (in fact, the employee cannot contribute to the 401(k) at all until after the probationary period). My overall feeling is that the hiring process, while straightforward, needs a steadier hand in recruiting management, and recruiting needs to be clear from the outset what hurdles must be overcome before a candidate can start working in the position.