Ghosted after four rounds. I applied for the position online and received a reply within 24 hours. Shortly after, I received and completed a case study and sent it back within two hours of receiving it. That same day, I got a call from the recruiter to test my French level. After confirming I met their language requirements, they sent me a link to schedule an online interview with a manager, which I promptly booked. On the scheduled day, just five minutes before the interview, I received an email saying the manager had a last-minute change and couldn’t join. The interview was rescheduled. (I understand that agency work can be chaotic, and last-minute cancellations happen, but this felt like the first red flag.) The rescheduled interview took place in French, which no one had mentioned beforehand. Since they were looking for an English native speaker with "spoken French," I had assumed the interviews would primarily be in English. Despite this, the manager was pleasant, and the interview was short, with no unexpected questions. I received an update later that same day, inviting me to the next round—an in-person interview with a manager from the anglophone team. When I arrived at their office, there was no meeting room booked, so we had to conduct the interview at a nearby café. It lasted over an hour and focused on putting me on the spot with off-balancing, more crisis-oriented questions. For instance, being asked to come up with a tagline for a client company on the spot, or recall recent campaigns with strong storytelling, or say what is happening in the economy right now. Yes, the world economy. The position required someone who could write in English but also be fully fluent in French, as 90% of the clients and employees were French. However, this critical detail was not mentioned in the job description. The interviewer assured me they would follow up in 3–4 days. Weeks have now passed without any response, despite my follow-up email after the first week. This was surprising, considering how prompt their earlier replies had been (usually within hours). In hindsight, there were several red flags throughout the process that I initially dismissed as part of the dynamic, fast-paced nature of agency work. However, ghosting a candidate after multiple rounds of interviews and a case study is, in my opinion, unprofessional and reflects poorly on the company.

The interview is in several steps and takes several months. It starts with a test which is a lot trickier than it looks. All of the interviews with various people seem redundant and could be optimized.