After submitting a tentative CV through the website, I was invited to an interview with a recruiter. This was a pretty generic interview which seemed to highlight that the recruiter had not really taken the time to read through my CV. The interview questions felt as though they could have been lifted from the Junior Encyclopedia of of first stage interviews, where the questions related to general knowledge of the company website. My understanding was that the area for which I was being interviewed for was a relatively new area and the company did not have a clear direction on how to take it forward. What was particularly telling was that the recruiter insisted that the area was 'brand new' despite myself having worked on a similar concept nearly 15 years ago. However, it quickly became apparent that the company was lacking the senior expertise necessary to fully develop in this area and that the position they were looking to fill was still a junior one (I am always concerned when companies claim to have a flat hierarchy ... ). Following this they described a recruitment process consisting an exercise (requiring approximately 5 hours) and further technical and HR interviews. I declined to complete the exercise as it seemed to be very generic, had limited assessment criteria, they wouldn't agree to an NDA at this stage and frankly wanted to know a little more about the company and whether it was a right fit for me before giving a day of free consultancy. Ultimately this was a disappointing interview, I felt as though the company was full of good ideas but didn't understand the market and didn't have a strong concept for how to develop their product. Therefore, I declined to take the interview process any further.

Video interview with recruiter; unfortunately, she had little clue about the contents of the position. I then was offered to solve a case study within a week. I declined this because it contained basically parts of the topics I would work on in the job itself. Company felt dubious to me like they only need free consulting and don't actually want to hire anyone.