I was contacted directly by a recruiter via LinkedIn. The recruiter shared the job posting, indicated my background was a strong fit, and provided a link for scheduling the screening call. After a few back and forth messages asking for clarifying details, the call was scheduled. Shortly after that, the recruiter sent me another LinkedIn message asking me to answer a four question "questionnaire" of the type that is unfortunately becoming more common in tech interviewing - the company putting more of the onus on the candidate instead of on the recruiting team to properly vet the candidate. I filled it out and received a thanks shortly afterwards. The day of my scheduled interview, I received another LinkedIn message approximately 20 minutes before the call that they "would not be moving forward with me as a candidate". So to recap: a recruiter reached out to me directly, indicating strong interest, asked me to perform additional labor, and then cancelled the scheduled interview 20 minutes before it was supposed to take place. It doesn't appear they have their act together at Upwork, and the experience felt exceptionally unprofessional.

I applied for the position of a Senior PM - International payments. I got a response from a recruiter, we chatted and then started the interview process. All in all, I had to meet with 3 people and the Hiring Manager. Usually the sequence would be HM and then the panel but the HM was away and I started with the first two. Then I met with the HM (who had started a couple of weeks ago) and then one other person. All in all, friendly people, super easy interviews, a nice opportunity. I got the impression that my experience and knowledge in this domain is more than that of the four people altogether. I believe I also nailed all four conversations. Eventually I got rejected and upon asking for feedback, I was ghosted. I guess I'll never find out what intimidated the interviewing team, or the HM most likely. This is super unethical and unprofessional when someone would spend 5 hours of talking to various people and then they won't find 2-5 minutes to copy/paste some feedback or give a quick call back to the candidate. Overall good impression from the team, except for the level they were at and the stage of this particular team (it is just being structured into its own), but the lack of feedback ruined everything for me.