Over the course of two months I had 6 interviews, submitted 2 written tasks. I was also asked to send samples of previous work. One interview was 3 hours long and was supposed to be followed by lunch, but the interviewers were not aware of that and were busy preparing for a conference. I was interviewed by an employee who had only been in the company for 1 month. I was also interviewed by the MD and co-founder. In many cases it felt like the first interview that the interviewers were giving. All interviewers were male apart from one: the HR representative. All in all, I invested around 30 hours in preparing, interviewing and writing. I was given two reasons for not receiving an offer. One reason was experience-based. I was not asked about this during any interview. Had I been asked about it, I would have been able to share additional experience that wasn't specified on my CV. With a rigorous process such as this, I would have expected at least a question such as "given that you have no experience in ____, what skills do you believe you will be able to use in ____?". I wonder why they bothered to interview me for 2 months and not mention it, if this experience was crucial to the role. The second reason was to do with their perception of my decision-making style. In interviews I was told that attention to detail and data-driven decision making was key, however I was then told that I didn't receive an offer because they believed I couldn't make decisions quickly enough for their fast-paced office and spent too much time considering details. I find this to be not only contradictory but a 2-dimensional view on a person's skills and one that, again, I wasn't actually asked about. Given that I invested 30+ hours of my time in preparing and interviewing, I would expect to be able to discuss something like this before a decision is reached. Ie. "We really need someone who can make fast decisions, you seem to spend a lot of time considering your choices, can you tell me a time when you've had to work quickly / is this something you feel you can do?". Again, I would have been able to provide examples. Other than to test out what is obviously a new recruitment process or to mine for information without hiring, I cannot think why I was put through such a rigorous process and allowed to progress to the stage that I did, without being given the opportunity to prove myself in these 2 areas where the hiring team believed I lack skills. The omission to ask me about what are obviously key skills feels like a disservice to both the company and to me as a candidate. This was altogether an extremely disappointing exploitation of my time, skills and effort. I hope this information helps the successful candidate. Best of luck.

Long process that started well, but ended after meeting with someone who did not seem interested in the process. I asked for feedback and was told they decided to go with another candidate