Best interview process I’ve ever had! It only about a week to get through this whole process and communication was great across the board with the talent acquisition specialist and interviewees.

Lengthy interview process. 5 total interviews. Phone screen with HR, video interview with hiring manager, face-to-face interview with two account executives, face-to-face interview with hiring manager followed by a one-on-one lunch with him, phone interview with area vice president. Interviews were all pleasant except for the last one in which the interviewer immediately gave off an unpleasant tone of voice (I was extremely surprised to be on the fifth interview only to encounter someone unhappy to be speaking to me). Although my work experience was above expectation and I nailed the interviews, I ultimately did not receive an offer because the competing candidate followed up with an action plan via email and 'showed more enthusiasm', the latter which I could not disagree with more. The action plan was an interesting point, and after doing much research and talking to friends who work for manufacturers ultimately felt like it was unnecessary given my experience. A plan seemed to only reiterate all of the ways that I could catch up to speed on clients that I had already spent a year building relationships with and products I had previously sold. I do think a more beneficial way to handle the situation would be for the company to allow the competing candidate the opportunity to respond to the other candidate's action plan. Great company and lengthy process, but ultimately I was interviewing as their Plan B in case something did not work out with the other candidate. I believe I was a Plan B because if a company of this magnitude cannot successfully extract the information that it needs from a candidate after three to four interviews, then the process is seriously flawed. Furthermore, after reviewing all current candidates with this title on LinkedIn, a possible conclusion is that this company tends to only hire females who have extremely impressive backgrounds while the males hired tend to have much more basic, baseline experience.