I had a negative candidate experience where the person managing hiring had me on read for 2 weeks with no update - I had followed up and expressed interest, but heard radio silence. She also canceled an interview day of when it had been booked with more than a 2 weeks heads up due to a holiday. The thing that doesn't make sense here is that she had responded with a "Thank you for booking with me..." 1 week prior, so I don't understand why she couldn't have flagged the holiday then. When hiring for a role within Talent Acquisition, you should especially be more cognisant on how you're working with the candidates. As the first impression and face of the company, It's a big tell on how the team works if this is how candidates are being treated.

I had a referral + applied online. Due to the referral, I got fast tracked. I had an initial phone screen but the invite said 15 minutes which was an initial red flag for me - you can't conduct an effective phone screen in 15 minutes. But the person doing the recruiting isn't a recruiter, so it is what it is. We did the phone screen and it went longer than 15 minutes and she let me know I'd be going to the next step, which was a 60 minute call and she also sent me a PDF containing the entire interview plan. We had the 60 minute call and it was mostly behavioral questions - nothing super groundbreaking. She sent me the take home assignment after that, which was "This a problem we're experiencing and need to hire for. Tell us how you'd approach it in 5 slides, with the 5th slide being a job description." & don't spend more than an hour and you can ask three supporting questions to help navigate the project. I did the project and in hindsight, I should have asked her what the goal of the project was because that wasn't clear at all in the assignment framework. In all total, I spent about 4 hours on the project. I submitted it, got a thank you email and "you'll hear from me tomorrow" but tomorrow came and went and I hadn't heard from her. Again, she's not a recruiter so she doesn't necessarily understand candidate experience, which is fine. I don't hear from her until after 6pm on Friday, which I had to email her to get her to give me an update, which was basically "Thanks for reaching out! I'm going to send an update on Monday but I can also have a quick call tomorrow if you want an update then. Thanks for being a part of this process!" So, obviously I'm getting rejected at that point and I wish she had just said that in THAT email versus sending a very puzzling email. But again, she's not a recruiter and obviously is trying to hire for one (and clearly needs one!) Overall, the interview process was fine. The candidate experience was non-existing but that's pretty typical at an early stage startup as they have no one doing it. In the end, she rejected me saying I was over qualified which also makes no sense but probably for the best.