My interview process started out promising; things went smoothly in the beginning, but the way it ended was an unorganized, miscommunicated mess. The process started with a traditional recruiter interview (with salary expectations), followed by a video chat with core team members. I was then flown on site to present a design prompt and to meet the team. It was really smooth and impressive experience for an out of state candidate. Kudos to the travel team. I felt things went well and the process seemed pretty standard. Interest definitely seemed mutual. A week or so later, I receive an email regarding concerns with my salary expectations being too high for the role. I was assessed at 20/25k less than my expectations however, no formal offer was made as they were still reviewing other candidates. The email was definitely cryptic and confusing as my salary expectations were discussed in the original recruiter interview and I was told the team was searching for top talent. If my requirements were too high, I would have preferred to have not moved forward and wasted everyone’s time. Then, a week or so after that, I was asked to do another video interview (with seemingly the same core team) where, through some miscommunication, the team didn’t show up and I was left without answers. I was about to withdraw from consideration as this was incredibly frustrating, but decided to just wait it out as I had already invested this much time in the company and process. Roughly another week later, I was NOT offered the role as they decided the team didn’t need designers and wanted more UX researchers. The entire process was interesting, to say the least. Hopefully, it works out better for other people and the company has learned from their mistakes.