The interview process here is extremely long (4 rounds + a take home project & presentation). It felt unnecessarily long because only 1 of the interviews felt the most informative about the day-to-day and what I can imagine myself doing. The teams are structured very differently than what I'm use to. I ended up getting an offer and couldn't take time to think it through without them emailing me and texting me. I ended up accepting then declining because I decided this company wasn't a great fit for me. Once I declined the HR person decided to let me know that he knew what was best for my career than I did. He said I wasted their time (like this doesn't happen to candidates when they don't get an offer but spent months interviewing). He made sure to make it clear that I don't know what I'm doing with my career. Well, I actually know exactly what I wanted for my career and this company didn’t offer that & they were unprofessional in receiving rejection. I saw some red flags from the manager and HR person leading up to "almost" starting this job. I'm comfortable with the decision I made especially after seeing HR's response. If a candidate ever sent an email like the one I received from this company, that would be viewed as unprofessional from the company. Overall, I think the company needs to hire a real HR team since the whole process lacked professionalism.

5 rounds of interviews, case study, reference checks. 1st - Cofounder - sent questions in email prior to interview, was casual and friendly yet structured. Cofounder facilitated setting up times and next steps in interview process. Was very friendly but sparse and disorganized in communication at times. Called me on the phone out of the blue at one point to apologize for this and at times scheduled via text message. 2nd - Hiring Manager/Team Member - work-focused conversational with questions, casual 3rd - Team Member - work-focused conversational with questions, casual 4th - Panel based w/ 4 team members, case study - Case study was paid & required a lot of work, I led presentation and team members asked questions after each section. This is fine and expected but some team members stopped to ask personal questions (nice in theory) but ended up making it so that it was impossible to finish the presentation in allotted time given ( I timed it prior and this should have been easily achievable.) - Feedback - Cofounder sent me both positive and constructive feedback in regards to my case study. I didn't find this necessary but it was helpful to know what any concerns they may have about me were to address in next interview. Team members followed up via email saying things like "We would be lucky to have you on the team." & "You and <name> will work great together - two peas in a pod!". Cofounder asked for feedback on interview process which I informed had been extremely positive despite long (1-2 weeks between each step, took ~2 months in total). He let me know that the final round would be CEO interview which would be informal just to ensure that our personalities meshed as the team was decided on moving forward at this point. - Reference Checks - Cofounder called 2 out of 4 of my requested references. It is extremely unprofessional and embarrassing to do this prior to confirming that the company will be making an offer. 5th - CEO - CEO came in with a very negative attitude and energy and had a list of questions prepared. Came across as she was not interested in speaking to me from the get-go. Questioned all of my responses to her inquiries and made slight digs at my personality throughout the interview. When I asked her questions she might as well have rolled her eyes before giving me rehearsed responses about how she never wanted to be a CEO or run a company. One good thing is they have a 24 hr turn around time for decision after CEO interview. Let me know next business day they would not be moving forward with the offer. Took 4 weeks of chasing to get compensated for the case study.