4 steps: Phone screen with recruiter, interview with hiring manager, written candidate assessment, and final interview (they flew me out) with the hiring team.
First two steps were very positive - the recruiter and hiring manager in initial phone interviews asked me about my experience using social media in a corporate setting and marketing initiatives I had led at my current company. Nothing too difficult.
The assessment was to create a social media plan for a blog post. The assessment was pretty open-ended, which I learned was the point to allow candidates interpret the challenge how they'd like to.
I was finally invited to a round of in-person interviews. I was told that the hiring team was "blown away" by the assessment I had completed, and were very interested to hear how I had applied basic social media strategies at my current company. The interview with the hiring manager was a little interesting. I thought my specific interview with her didn't go well because towards the end of the interview, she appeared to run out of questions to ask me. I later learned that the hiring manager had very much liked me and thought highly of me as a candidate.
I finally received a phone call from the recruiter with the rejection. Essentially, the feedback was that I was too "advanced" for the role and that they were looking for a more execution-oriented, entry level person. I was pretty surprised by the rejection as it is clear by looking at my resume that I'm not entry level. I also learned that the hiring team had a very hard time deciding on a candidate because they interviewed many candidates for the final round (which to me speaks to an inefficiency in their hiring practices). Ultimately, I received no negative feedback other than that I was basically overqualified for the role. At the end of the day, I don't understand why I was brought to the final round of an interview if the rejection criteria was something that could have been gleaned from a resume. (I was told I interviewed very well and that the entire team really liked me)
