An internal recruiter from Raylo reached out to me on a job board about an opening as a frontend developer, so I sent them my CV over. The first interview involved a chat over a video call with the hiring manager to discuss the role further, which went well and I was progressed to the next stage. After that I had an interview with the Director of Engineering to discuss more of my technical background and how my experience was a good fit for the role. I then progressed to a technical interview. This was all still over video call. The technical test lasted for about an hour and 15minutes and involved implementing logic for a game of tic-tac-toe. I was able to complete the game fully, implement typescript and add unit testing for the different permutations of winning combinations. I then progressed to a “final” culture fit interview where I had an in-person interview about my past experiences and how I work with others. I thought I established a good rapport with the person conducting the interview and felt good about the interview afterwards. I was then progressed to a second “final” interview which was with one of the co-founders. The interview started off well but the tone shifted when I discussed reasons why I would be willing to leave the current position I’m in. The interviewer seemed dumbfounded that I would work for a company which had areas that I wasn’t fully comfortable with. The tone shift threw me off, and I probably should’ve ended the interview there but I had already sunk a lot of time and effort into the process so finished the interview. It took me a couple of attempts of reaching out to hear back about the outcome of the process, but they got in touch today to tell me they were looking for someone with more depth in some technical areas and that they “didn’t quite get a strong sense of alignment” at the final stage. Funnily enough, I’m fine with the “vibes were off lol” reasoning but don’t understand why they’d make me travel to London for an in person interview, followed by another interview with the cofounder afterwards if they didn’t think my skills were sufficient after the technical interview. Just seems disingenuous. Maybe I’m just petty because I didn’t get a job offer, but at the same time I’d like to think other software developers who have had similar experiences can understand the frustration of an unnecessarily long interview process just to be given bad news.