A 20 minute phone screen was all they did before sending me a case study that was clearly intended to be a MAJOR investment of time. It took me ~8 hours to complete with a 48 hour turnaround expectation, despite not having enough context on the role yet to really know if I was interested myself. They promptly progressed me to the next round, talking to 2 more people from the team, and that conversation seemed to go well -- they alluded to next steps and suggested I'd hear quickly about proceeding. Note that at this point, I'd invested over 10 hours in the process thus far, and was told there would still be 2 more rounds of 2 interviews each. No one had really asked about my experience or background, just hypothetical DoorDash-specific scenarios and gauging how I'd approach them. Then, 2 days later, I got a brief rejection email with no feedback or acknowledgement of the major time commitment, and despite signals from the team to the contrary. I think if you have people do free labor for you as part of an interview process, you at least owe them feedback on your work or your interview responses. Also, I applied nearly 3 months before they reached out to me for an initial conversation. As an aside, I generally think take-home projects are best as a second-to-last step (prior to executive-level conversations and signoffs), once everyone involved has mutually agreed on the potential fit, not a first step.

The interview process was very swift, but lacked a lot of the information needed to understand the role and determine if it was the right opportunity. The HR interview was very easy and standard but I was very disappointed that they didn't know 1) what the job truly was besides the job title 2) what accounts this position would manage 3) how quick the process would go. It then moved to a 3-part video interview with 3 30 minute segments with different people in similar roles. This was a very intimidating process especially since you didn't know what the job actually was. Overall not that bad but just strange. I think I just expected more and was let down that it was a bit unorganized.