I was approached by a 3rd-party recruiter via LinkedIn about the position. I let her know I was interested and we set up a short phone screen. It was a quick interview and she let me know she would move me forward into the next round of interviews.
The next interview I had was with someone who also wasn't directly with the company but was an HR consultant. The interview went well but was somewhat frustrating I still hadn't talked with someone from the actual company. She let me know on the spot that I would be moving on to the next round of interviews which was great.
Lastly, I had a phone interview with the VP of Operations. The call was only 30 minutes, but he called late and had a hard stop at the 30-minute point. Didn't quite seem like enough time to really go through all of my experience but it seemed like this interview went well like the others. However, this time, a week later I get a vague response from the recruiter, saying that they wanted to move me on to the next round but just needed to coordinate with everyone's schedule on their team. 3 weeks pass with little to no communication from anyone, none without me prompting. I then get a response, a 4 weeks later from the time of the last interview, saying that they decided to hire a referral instead. It was extremely disappointing and frustrating to wait all that time just to find out they moved on - why couldn't they have let me know 3 weeks earlier?
The process up until the last interview was fine because the recruiter was attentive, transparent, and helpful. If it wasn't for her, it would have been a worse overall experience.