If you’re considering interviewing for an AE role at Toast, here’s a friendly heads-up: bring a notepad—you’ll need it to keep track of whatever “process” they think they’re running. After sailing through multiple rounds where everyone supposedly “loved me”, the final interviewer somehow forgot a major step that they themselves requested, only to later insist on another round. Instead of owning the mistake, they got oddly defensive, acted like I should be grateful for the confusion, and spent most of the time projecting an ego that didn’t match the role or the clarity of their communication. One moment it’s an SMB role, the next they’re not even sure what they want. Alignment? Apparently irrelevant. Consistency? Optional. Accountability? Never heard of it. It became pretty obvious that this isn’t just a one-off slip—this is a company uncertain of its own direction, run by leadership that seems more interested in protecting their pride than building a coherent hiring process or vision. If this is how they treat candidates—people they supposedly want—I can only imagine what the internal culture looks like. If you value your time, clarity, or working with adults who actually know what they’re doing… I’d stay far, far away from this unprofessional mess.

A recruiter followed up my application with a request to schedule an initial screen, provided a link to select multiple times and it was scheduled after I submitted my responses. The recruiter screen was generic, as if they were reading from a list of standard prompts -- you've been asked these questions a 100 times before, I'm sure. They seemed completely disinterested, just moving from one question to the next and ended the screen by saying they'd be in touch with what next steps may be. They did follow up to inform me that they'd like to have me interview with the hiring manager, setting that up was the same process as the recruiter screen and I was able to meet with them the same week. That call was much more casual, seemed to be more of a vibe check than anything. Same as the recruiter screen, it ended with me being told my recruiter will be in contact with any next steps. Later in the week, my recruiter sent an email informing me that they'd like me to continue to process, provided a link to schedule another more formal call with the hiring manager. After scheduling that, I was THEN informed I would have to create a project and present it during that call, which equated to unpaid consulting work. From the initial hiring manager call through this point, the recruiter was very communicative and checked in regularly, how I was feeling about the call and the project. For my second round with the hiring manager, I presented the project and received feedback, which all seemed to be mostly positive. I was given some recommendations for changing small bits here and there with the intention of presenting to someone higher up the org over sales, and that my recruiter would reach out with next steps. That's when the recruiter ghosted, like many Toast recruiters seem to do, no follow-up check in to my last call, nothing related to next steps. By the end of the week, I received a canned "thanks but no thanks" copy & paste email from the recruiter. Overall, I felt it was a waste of my time and unprofessional to ghost someone who had been through that much of the process as well as expecting someone to perform what would otherwise be paid work if they were actually IN that role just to interview for it. My recommendation to anyone who may be going through the process themselves that is asked to create any sort of project plan is to safeguard it, watermark it, or use a timed file sharing service so Toast can't benefit from your unpaid consulting services.