I went through three interviews over the span of about a month, and the process left a bad taste in my mouth. During my initial recruiter call, I was told this would be a three-step process: recruiter → hiring manager → panel.
I had a 1-on-1 interview with the hiring manager, which was primarily behavioral, followed by a presentation with a panel. Personally, I wasn’t a fan of the presentation interview style—it felt like they were just extracting free work rather than genuinely assessing my skills.
After the presentation, I received positive feedback and was told I would be scheduled for a "final" fourth interview with leadership (which was not a part of the 3 step process they mentioned in the beginning). However, a few days later, they informed me that they were no longer considering candidates without [X] years of experience.
Not only was the process unnecessarily long and demanding—requiring significant preparation for both the interviews and the presentation—but they also changed their requirements at the last minute, after I had already completed multiple rounds. If experience was a dealbreaker, that should have been made clear upfront, not after weeks of effort.