For a company that says their top focus is customer satisfaction, they couldn't care less about the candidate experience. I interviewed with College Board for 10 weeks. They have no problem wasting candidates' time or their references time (read to the end). While I really enjoyed meeting people throughout the organization who are smart and kind, I do think the interview process is a true indicator of how a company will treat you as an employee. The indication I got was that this is a slow moving org with a lot of red tape that struggles to make decisions efficiently, and will expect you as an employee to bend over backwards with very little consideration. This was the worst experience I have ever had as a candidate. At every stage, the recruiter dropped the ball on something, was unresponsive, or when she did respond - sent incomplete communication: 1. Recruiter Screen - I was emailed 2 weeks after I sent in my application inviting me to set up a phone call. I scheduled one for the following week. The day of the interview, I got a call 10 minutes late from a DIFFERENT recruiter who was covering for the lead on this role. She rushed through her scripted questions and then could not tell me much about the role because she was not the lead. She invited me to email the lead recruiter with my questions. I did so, and the lead recruiter did email back 2 days later thanking me for my flexibility and letting me know she would reply to my questions and provide an update on next steps the following day. She never followed through on that. Even when I followed up a week later, she never replied. 2. First Round - 2 weeks after the initial screen, I received an invite for a first round interview with someone who works closely with the hiring manager for the role. It was a 25 minute zoom call and I was told to prepare for behavioral questions. The interviewer was late starting the call, and we talked through my experience (no behavioral questions). She told me they were restructuring the interview process to talk to as many candidates as possible -- basically have more but shorter interviews. Since this was a 25 minute call that started late, there was no time for me to ask questions or learn more about the role. She also could not tell me anything about timeline or next steps. I waited a week to follow up with the recruiter. Only when I sent a follow up did she inform me to expect an update within the next day. 3. Hiring Manager Interview - I was then invited to a 30 minute zoom interview with the hiring manager. When I scheduled the interview, I asked the recruiter once again if she could share more details about some key problems this role was designed to solve so that I could better frame my experience when I spoke with the hiring manager. She once again told me she would think about my question and get back to me, but never did. I was told to prepare for a behavioral interview again. The hiring manager was late to the interview but thankfully spent some time at the beginning of the call to share more about herself and what she was looking for with this role. This did help me highlight my experience in the conversation (but it was not a behavioral interview). This was the one call that did end with clear next steps, and the hiring manager said I would hear from the recruiter within the next few days. 4. Panel Interview & Candidate Exercise - 2 days later, the recruiter emailed me to let me know they wanted to move me forward to the final round which would be an exercise and presentation to a panel. She gave me ONE time slot that I made work. This communication was on a Friday and the interview was the following Thursday. The exercise was not ready yet, but she said she would try and have it to me by end of day. She did not send it and I followed up with her on Monday. End of day Monday, she apologized for the delay and sent me a word document with the exercise. This gave me 48 hours to prepare a presentation addressing FIFTEEN bullet points. I am currently employed, so I only had evenings to work on this, and in total I spent about 12 hours crafting a solution to the problem and preparing a cohesive set of slides. The communications from the recruiter also had conflicting information on how the interview would be structured. It said 10 minutes in some places but 15-20 minutes in others. It also mentioned that this would be more of a workshop, so I should be prepared for questions related to the exercise. I received no clarification on timing. The morning of, I sat in the waiting room for the Zoom for 5 minutes past the start time. After 5 minutes, I emailed the recruiter to ask if I had the correct link. 7 minutes past the start time, one of the panelists emailed me with a new link so we started about 10 minutes late. As a result, the panel asked me to rush through my presentation. Then they asked behavioral questions. The panelists did stay about 10 minutes later to answer some of my questions. The recruiter emailed at the end of the day (6 hours later) apologizing that she sent the wrong Zoom link. 5. Reference Checks - At 4:30pm the Friday after the panel interview, the recruiter emailed me to ask for references and salary expectations. College Board uses Crosschq for their references, so she said to expect a link within the next hour. She also asked that I complete my references quickly so they could make a decision within the next week. I never received the link. I emailed the recruiter back to ask her to resend the link. She replied on Monday mid-morning with the link, and asked me again to prioritize getting the references done that day. College Board doesn't call anybody. It is all a survey (the candidate completes it for themself and then the references complete the same survey). They say it takes about 10-15 minutes, but it took me and each of my 3 references upwards of 30 minutes to write out responses to each of the questions. All my references graciously completed this same day. I emailed the recruiter back to confirm that everything was complete, and she never responded. In a normal situation, asking for references generally indicates an offer is coming. Particularly because this was so time consuming for my references and the recruiter was asking me to move quickly, I anticipated College Board would move quickly too. I hadn't heard anything from her by Thursday of that week so I emailed to follow up. She sent back a cryptic email saying they were delayed on their end and she would have more information for me by middle of the following week. The fact that she did not proactively reach out to me was disconcerting. I waited anxiously through the weekend (again), and on Wednesday of the following week I received a rejection email that said "we are unable to move forward with an offer." I was certain there was nothing wrong with my references, so I asked the recruiter for feedback or a reason why. She replied back with a clearly AI-written email saying my experience was great and they valued getting to know me, but I was one of THREE strong finalists and they ultimately went with someone who had more experience at the scale of this role. I was shocked that they asked 3 different candidates for references before they had made a decision. It was even more shocking that the decision came down to something that they could have screened for at the very beginning of the process. This is a horrible practice, puts candidates in an awkward position with their network by wasting references' time, and is quite honestly downright disrespectful and inconsiderate to the candidate especially after asking candidates to invest so much time and effort in a rigorous process. Everything about the interview process is about making it simpler for College Board to window shop candidates with absolutely no consideration for the candidate experience or their time. It is a very one-directional process as well, with very little opportunity to learn about the role or the company, but the way they treat their candidates tells you everything you need to know.