From the start this was a professional, friendly, and organized process. It never felt like the typical formal, impersonal recruitment and interview process. My phone and in person meetings, were nice conversations between professional humans with similar experiences. Workday states their people are the company's most important asset, and appears to be so. Just from my limited interactions, it's easily recognizable they wanted to get to know me, as much as my skill set... without ever crossing any personal (or HR) lines.

For a HR company, I thought the interview process would be more humane. Nope. Just like many other companies, they have now adopted AI and are relying too much on it to hire people. Scheduled a phone screen through an automated Workday Scheduling Assistant called Paradox. It was a nifty tool and made scheduling easy, but only works if the recruiter actually sends you the link. The call started and she was 5 minutes late. It was a Zoom call yet both of us had our cameras off. Weird. During the call, the recruiter kept waving company stock (that vests after 4 years) in my face as if it is the only thing that guarantees career longevity. Left a bad taste in my mouth. I ignored the fact that she knew nothing about the industry she was hiring for (instructional design). She also didn't tell me anything about the rest of the interview process. After the call, I sent a thank you email and included a question about the rest of the interview process. She responded by telling me to use Paradox to schedule an interview with the hiring manager--ignoring my question completely. I didn't receive an email from Paradox so I sent a follow up. I also re-asked about the interview process. No answer. Fast forward to the hiring manager call. It was very much an interview. Not conversational at all. He kept asking me for stories that show my work but never specified what exactly he was looking for. He just said "Tell me about a project you recently worked on." "Ok great, tell me another one." Shame on me for not asking for clarification. I even tried to be personable and only got a few chuckles out of him. After both interviews, I sent follow up thank you emails. No response. Fine. That's normal for the grueling job search world I guess. A week and a half later, I got the soul-sucking Do-Not-Reply email that I was not selected. Surprise surprise.