I applied for the job in August. It's now the middle of October and just heard back that they were hiring someone else. That is a ridiculous time frame. The first two portfolio review interviews with the hiring manager and peers were fine, except in the second they did not plan enough time for questions. The last three interviews are STAR format with three people interrogating you and demanding answers in that exact format. This is supposed to be their culture interview. They repeat questions over and over between all three within a 3 hour meeting in a day so you feel like you're in an alternate universe or about to be put in prison. There is little time to meet the folks you'll be working with because they are so intent on grilling you. It was such an unpleasant, robotic experience, and so unnecessarily drawn out. Sometimes we just don't have examples. Take the question, tell me about a time when you had a complicated project. My complicated projects take years and I can't fit that into four sentences. And sometimes not everything can be quantified. It's just stupid and demoralizing. I had another offer in the wings and I couldn't even get the recruiter to give me an update. Then when she finally did, it was an autoreject. This, after telling me initially I was the first candidate on the list and that the feedback was amazing. Granted, she did give me a link to book time, I have feeling that I dodged a bullet, given that they laid off most of their content designers just eight months ago.

I had two interviews with two different recruiters before being passed to the hiring manager. The next round was a series of panel interviews that was scheduled last minute as I had a competing offer that I needed to get back to ASAP. I was made an offer after the panel interview.