I had an initial chat with a recruiter that went well. They told me all about the company and it sounded great. He sent me a coderbyte challenge (this is where things went downhill). The link they sent turned out to be expired so I reached out for a new link. After I started the challenge I had a ton of technical issues where half of the features weren’t working. The challenge was actually extremely easy, so it’s a shame considering. I completed the best I could and reached out letting them know my technical issues. Instead of any understanding or even allowing a retry with a different question, I received a swift rejection message. All in all, I think I dodged a bullet with this company.

I was in this interview process EIGHT ROUNDS over the course of THREE MONTHS. And DID NOT RECEIVE AN OFFER, or even any closure. First I spoke with a recruiter, who was happy enough with the first interview to send me a CoderPad technical assessment. The assessment wasn't too difficult, and he said I did well enough to move forward to a technical interview. I did the technical interview, passed it. Did a cultural interview, passed it. He wanted a SECOND cultural interview, and after that stage, he finally told me "congratulations, you passed all the interviews with flying colors" (his exact words). From there, they would have to wait for an opening on a team where I would fit. I thought this was strange, as both the previous cultural interviews were with team leads that were supposed to be good fits. After this, I waited over a month, and checked in every so often to see what the progress was, only to be told by the recruiter that I was at the top of his list, they were just waiting on a fit. Finally, almost two months after I started the process, there was a possible fit coming up. But I needed to do another technical interview! (That's five interviews if you're keeping track.) I passed that too, but it still wasn't the end. Then I interviewed with the Vice President of the client business (6), and got great feedback from him. That STILL wasn't enough, and I was told I needed a "final" interview now with with CTO of Zeal (7), just to make sure I was a "good fit." (Even though months earlier, this recruiter described be as a perfect fit.) I thought this "final" interview went extremely well, but afterwards, I was completely ghosted for a week, after which the recruiter finally responded to my request for feedback with a copy-pasted rejection, and wished me well. I pressed for more information as to why, because up until this point I only ever received positive feedback, including being told I passed all my interviews with "flying colors". So this 180 completely blindsided me. Only after a WEEK of polite requests for feedback was I told "we didn't feel like it was a good fit going forward" with no further information. I still have no idea why this decision was changed, but I do know that I wasted hours of my life over the course of three months with Zeal IT. I guess the moral of this story, if you don't get an offer within three interviews, you should probably just cut your losses and say goodbye.

The interview process was really great, talking to Casidy and Alexis was a good experience and the feedback helped me a lot to improve my career, I would love to have another opportunity to have an interview with them and be able to join the team!