tldr;
Everyone is nice and friendly.
Don't expect any response within the month atm. Chasing up helped me.
Don't expect feedback.
Phase 1:
Applied through their site (along with 2 other applications and 1 request for more information about a role).
Received automated confirmation email.
9 days later I chased up on LinkedIn, replied straight away, they chased up the specific tech recruiter.
Got an email that evening, booked a call the 2 days after.
Had a 25 minute call.
Call summary:
Tech recruiter was really friendly and energetic.
He spent a good amount of time explaining the structure of the company and giving me the sales pitch for the company. I really appreciated that. That was really helpful. It also reinforced that the Kraken was the team I was most keen to apply for.
Tech recruiter was keen to put me in touch with the sub-company that I put the information request in about. The information he gave me about that role didn't particularly sell it to me. Nothing wrong with it, just didn't really sound like what I was looking for, but I thought I could find out more from speaking to that team.
He put my application forward to 2 of the other positions that I thought were very interesting, so I thought I'd give them a shot, but I didn't think I had a particularly excellent match of skills on.
When in the phone chat I seemed keener for the Kraken role he seemed a little avoiding. He said the position may be a little junior for me (which wasn't a problem for me, purpose it more important the position for me), and that my covering letter (singular) seemed to match more with the other role. I had submitted 4 quite different CVs highlighting different aspects of how I'd match with different roles, so I wasn't sure if he'd read each one or read one and glanced at the others and concluded that they were the same?
End of call summary.
I got 1 rejection from one of the long shorts about 30 mins after the call, which is nice and timely, but no feedback or reasoning, just a generic automated message.
The other long shot sent a rejection 2 days after that, same automated message.
The request for more information came back 8 days after the call, apologizing for the delay saying that the team was working out their process, they asked me for my github account and then in a separate email a few hours later with a coding assignment.
I said I was rather busy that week but I'd try to find time (I was utterly snowed under for 2 weeks. I had a couple of brief moments to peek at the application (although initially I didn't have permissions (these things happen) so we had a brief back and forth sorting that out, they gave me a zip in the end.
I sent an apology 5 days later for not getting back, briefly explaining that I'll be extra delayed getting back.
2 weeks later I submitted the assignment.
3 days later I got a direct response from the person in the team. A rejection with some good and reasonable feedback. Which was very appriciated.
But I was never actually applying to that position, I just wanted to know more information.
All the while, still nothing response from the Kraken application (the one I was most interested in).
I took a pause in applications anyway while life was manic until it calmed down a bit and I'd had a breather.
Phase 2:
Then I email chased up about the Kraken position. With an updated covering letter and CV, now I knew more about it.
The email delivery was incomplete.
So I waited until the 3 month reapply limit ran out (which was in less than a week at that point) and applied again for the Kraken position that I hadn't got a reply from.
The auto-reply was different this time, they'd added a section saying that the response may take "sometimes even 3 or 4 weeks as our volume of applications have increased recently". Which is fair.
... 4 weeks later, still nothing.
I messaged the original person I chased up, as I couldn't DM or email the recruiter that I was in contact with before (which is fair).
... 1 more week later. Still no response.
So I chased up the chase up.
This time, next-day response (maybe they were just on holiday, which is fair), very polite, they chased up with a recruiter.
50 minutes later, automated rejection email.
Very quick when they got nudged, would have been nice to have any feedback. Admittedly I'd assume it was just my skill and experience weren't a good enough match, especially when they're getting so many applications through.
Which is fine, it would just have been nicer 5 months ago.