A recruiter reached out via email approximately a week after submitting my application. We quickly scheduled a phone call screen, during which the recruiter provided valuable insights into the setup of the product design team and the expectations associated with the role. I was genuinely impressed by the recruiter's professionalism and kindness, which created a comfortable environment for our conversation. Unfortunately, despite the positive interaction, I was ultimately rejected for the position due to insufficient mobile experience. However, the recruiter encouraged me to stay connected and informed me that more positions would be opening soon.

I interviewed with Toast recently and only made to the Hiring Manager round (2nd). The process took about 3 weeks in total and was relatively easy. But with the very competitive market, I think the candidate has to be a perfect match to get hired. I got a referral from the friend who's working at Toast, 2 days after them submitted referral, I got the email for complete the application. Then a 30-minute recruiter call was set a week later to go over my previous experience, my career goals, and culture fit. It was very smooth and easy, I heard back from the recruiter 2 hours later and got moved into the hiring manager call, which was about a week later. The HM call was 30 minutes, very similar to the recruiter call but with a little more in depth behavioral questions to understand my design process and culture fit. Overall, the HM call went well, there wasn't a scripted process and we basically went with flow. I didn't quite answer two of the questions clearly (not using STAR format). 3 days later, I heard from the recruiter that they decided moving forward with other candidates without providing any detailed interview feedback.