After their had ATS goofed up and miscalculated my YoE, I reached out to the hiring manager on LinkedIn and got given another chance. The HR person sent me a written assessment, which I cleared before the allotted deadline.
The HR person called me to check if I'd be available for a video interview. The interview was scheduled for the day after with 2 of the team members and the HR person.
Turns out, my interviewers were team members who were presently employed (as of the time of the interview) in the same position that I was being interviewed for, which was bizarre. This became evident to me in how combative one of them seemed in their tone and attitude towards me from the get-go. The other interviewer barely spoke during the interview and looked as if they'd rather be anywhere else doing something different than be present for the interview. The HR person never showed up to moderate the process as a "neutral" third-party.
This one combative team member was more interested in learning about what I DIDN'T know about tangential aspects to the role I had applied for than what I did know about the role itself. Coming back to their tone for a brief second again, they seemed to question the authenticity of the details I had furnished on my resume, putting up questions like why I had been given the title of a "Senior" in my current role with my current employer, which I feel was gravely overstepping of professional boundaries and common courtesy. Once they were able to fish out things that I wasn't particularly well informed about, they kept grilling me about them, asking me things that I honestly don't feel related to the job role and wasn't mentioned anywhere in the JD. The person is probably still unaware that a role called 'Patent Paralegal' exists in the real world where the people who hold the role are responsible for handling aspects of the job that they were so interested in knowing if I knew them.
As the interview neared its end, I asked them a few questions about the company, the role, the team size, etc., which the interviewers either vaguely answered with minimal detail or waved off with a "You'll find out if are hired".
The entire process felt highly unprofessional from start to finish, so I'd recommend any other interviewers to watch out for major red flags if you choose to apply. Small wonder that the position in question remains unfilled even after months of the job posting being live.