Initial discussions took place with the internal recruiter. All were very positive, quite friendly, extremely responsive.
This was followed by an on-site interview with some members of the team, including the CTO. Here the process was quite well done. I got a great feel for the business, its challenges, and how people felt the business had to position itself to remain competitive.
Ultimately I wasn't made an offer and I do understand their reason, but not their rationale. I didn't want to rate my "overall experience" as negative but "no opinion" seemed a little inaccurate. So I would like to explain that a little bit because again while I have no problem with the reason, it was the rationale that I found concerning after I had time to reflect on the interview. Another reviewer, for a different role entirely, had said they felt they were refining their candidate interview process and I think that's certainly true for the QA and testing roles.
My biggest concern is that the issues they _thought_ they had with me ("Would he be too strategic at the expense of being tactical?") were never actually put to the test. In other words, I was never really given a chance to mitigate those concerns. And that was a bit off-putting because the role, during the interview, was very much intimated as more of a strategic role but with a specific tactical focus of working with the business to craft acceptance and scenarios. Something that I have massive numbers of blog posts on and could have talked about in detail -- had I been asked.
So there was just the assumption made about my approach without actually presenting, say, a tactical challenge for me. (Example: "Let's talk about how you would test our functionality. What tests would you write? How would you work with business to write these?") Nor was I even allowed to address the concern; which would be okay, except for the fact that I was told multiple times during the interview that they weren't really sure exactly how to interview for this role. I was also repeatedly asked what my "philosophy" was on one thing or another (TDD, QA, developers as testers, etc). Yet "too much philosophy" was ultimately what I got dinged on.
But, again, the experience overall was very positive. And I was contacted and given reasons why I would not be move forward in the process. And that matters! Many companies don't do that anymore and I was appreciative of this effort on the part of the company.