I interviewed for a job in August 2022 - October 2022. I managed to do the first interview and tech test and progress to the second interview. I thought that the interviews went well. However, after the last interview things started to take a turn. It took dovetail a good few weeks to get back to me which is fine but not amazing. Unfortunately I did not get the job which is total fine as I have done job interviews before and lost to more experienced individuals, which is totally fair. However, in this instance it is extremely odd how I lost to a candidate that had barely any prior experience, whilst I have had 3 years experience under my belt with a proven track record. Maybe Dovetail thought I had to much experience for the role? But surely more experience is better? And it’s a junior role so you are learning on the job and I would have been able to fill in the gaps quicker since I have hands on experience / skills from my job. But all of this does not compare to what HR sent to me when they rejected me in favour of another candidate. A line from the email… 'The other candidate just demonstrated a greater understanding and skillset within their task and would hit the ground running quicker.' But how? After the technical test, the main audio designer said that I did extremely well and had even completed the task in a way he has never seen before. Granted there was one little part where he said it was not optimal to do this but I still had got it right. But to say 'they would hit the ground running quicker' is completely unwarranted and assumes quite a lot of the other candidate / ignores my entire work experience. At the beginning of the email HR said they had to 'chase a decision from the employee since he is off', which sounds to me like I annoyed HR and the employee even though it was a few weeks after and I had other interviews. You could just wait for him to come back and say sorry he is off until XX we will get back to you then. It sounds like because I emailed once (which is a very normal thing to do after 2-3 weeks) they got annoyed and went with the another candidate. I spoke to numerus friends and colleagues in both the triple AAA and professional work spaces and they agreed that it is highly unprofessional to assume a candidate, who again had barely any previous experience, would hit the ground running quicker, then a full fledged experienced worker AND say it to me in a email. A lot of them chalked it up to, 'they probably knew the person' which is unfortunately what I have to go on / the impression I got from dovetail. Having spoken to colleagues about the dovetail interview all of them said that this company is a red flag / and to have been spoken to like that in a interview email is highly unprofessional.