I applied for the position in December 2023 and was contacted by a recruiter for a screening call in February 2024. After passing the screening call, I was told there would be 3 additional interviews - one with the team, one with the VP, and one with the CEO. I was told that hiring for this role had been delayed so they're looking to hire within two weeks. The order of the interviews was mixed up for some reason, and the following week after the screening call with the recruiter, I had an interview with the VP, and then the CEO, and then the team. Everything seemed to be going well and the interviews were scheduled in quick succession and the feedback I had been given was "everyone is really enjoying their conversations with you". Where it got tricky was after the interview with the CEO, which went well, the CEO let me know that he wanted to make the hire by the end of the week. This worked for me and seemed like a good sign. I thought that the interview with the team might not happen because they were trying to hire someone quickly and could not align the team's schedules to accommodate an interview in time. To my surprise, the recruiter reached out to me after the interview with the CEO to schedule the interview with the team and asked for my availability NEXT week. I let her know that I was under the impression that the hiring decision was to be made by the end of the week, as the CEO told me. The recruiter said that it was more realistic that the decision would be made by the end of the following week. I scheduled the interview with the team to be on Friday. It went well, but then I didn't hear back from the recruiter until Sunday night at 9 pm when she emailed me requesting writing samples. I thought this was strange as writing samples were not mentioned at all, but I of course obliged. I sent the writing samples that same Sunday night. Then on Monday morning the recruiter requested a reference list. I already had one prepared, so that wasn't a problem, and I took it to be a good sign since it's rare, in my experience, for your references to be called up if the decision to hire someone wasn't pretty much solid already. The people on my reference list confirmed to me that the recruiter reached out to them on Monday, the same day that I sent the recruiter my reference list. However, I didn't hear anything from anyone in the following days. I followed up with the recruiter on Friday afternoon asking if a decision had been made, as it was already the end of the week. The recruiter said I'd hear back by Wednesday of the following week. This was yet another delay after a pretty rushed process. The days went by, filled with anxiety and anticipation of the decision, and finally on late Wednesday afternoon the recruiter let me know that they chose a different finalist.