After an initial introductory chat with Max, the interview process was organised along three main contact points. During the first two, we discussed my previous experience, had a chat about more content-specific / technical matters, and also generally got to gain a better shared understanding of what the company was looking for and what I could bring to the table. Before the third of these chats with one of the co-founders, I was asked to complete verbal and text reasoning tests, and also prepare a hands-on case study to present. I stayed in touch with Max who guided me through the whole process and also generally proved to be a most helpful point of contact, both to get to know more about the firm, to deal with admin considerations, and also to connect me to other employees after I had asked to.

I got through to final stage interview. All other interviews were with the recruitment team, role peers or junior. On the final interview, I was tasked to do an analyst task and present this to team which was deliberately vague (apparently, their clients have no commercial objectives or focus) and was more junior than the role required. In any event, the recruitment company provided very good feedback and suggested I focus on the analysis piece and provide a good background to my methodology and approach. The feedback they gave was that I provided a very good analysis and was good at what I did but that the granular analysis was not required for the task (they were referring probably to my methodology and approach for me to get a feel for the data - using Python nd R automated analysis tools). Also, the final interviewers were disinterested, asked very few questions and it felt like there mind was already made up. My reading on this and the feedback I received was that they probably had chosen someone already (probably internal; times are tough with Covid-19 for SMEs) but had to follow the recruitment rigour to ensure that there is no favouritism. Basically, don't waste your time with this company, they will provide very little feedback, provide the wrong information to the recruiter on what should be focussed on just so they can satisfy their own internal processes disregarding those out of work wasting their precious time. Thanks but no thanks!!