Initial phone interview with the recruiter, followed by a call with the VP of Marketing. From here, I was asked to do a prompt which had to be approved by the VP before coming in and presenting it as the final round.

The first interview with a recruiter was great. She was very sweet, arranged meetings in a timely fashion, and was there to answer my questions. The next stage was with a hiring manager, one of their VPs. The interview started with a 10min presentation about her career until Flexport, her kids in college, her volunteering activities, and how she didn’t want to take a job at Flexport at first. Then, I talked for around 8min about my work and experience, after which she said she sees I have a lot of skills they are looking for, so instead of carrying on with this short interview, she’ll ask the recruiter to arrange an onsite meeting with me. There, according to the VP, we can dig deeper into my skillset. A few hours later, I got an automated email, saying that they decided to proceed with other candidates. At first, I thought it must be a mistake. Soon I realized that the VP, who was also a hiring manager, cut the interview short because she didn't want to proceed with my application. I feel entirely okay that the skillset wasn’t the best match in her opinion, but why lie? I didn’t even get a chance to ask a single question, which would have helped me get a better overview of the marketing department and if I should watch out for other roles in the future. I made time in my busy calendar to attend the interviews and for human decency, I believe I deserved a minute or two to ask a few questions, especially that we had 10min left. If the hiring manager has no guts to say that the candidate is not the best to proceed further to the candidate’s face, it’s okay to conclude saying that they’ll have more interviews and the recruiter will come back once they have made a decision. I was upset by this dishonesty. However, I probably should be happy I didn’t get hired by the manager who has no strength to say things to people’s eyes and is simply lying. I was very impressed by Flexport’s ambitions but I see it now as an authoritarian company, where VPs are allowed to think they are gods and their time is much more valuable than applicants'. This is a thinking of the 80s or 90s, with a lack of honesty and human respect.