Four round of interviews:
#1 Recruiter
#2 Tech art director
#3 Art manager
#4 Lead Pipeline Engineer
I was reached out on Linked in by the recruiter. I was interested in looking in this opportunity but first I decided to have a look to the job description.
That because I have always worked in the console/PC AAA sector and I have not experience in mobile development.
That is where I noticed that I didn't match three key points of the job description: mobile experience, Unity professional experience and C# professional experience. I didn't want to spoil anyone's time, so I asked from the very beginning whether it was the case to continue the process. I have been told that for the role they have in mind was different than the job description (more DCC oriented) and those requirements didn't apply.
I also recognized that my current line of work was very close to what they were after. For this reason we mutually agreed to continue the process.
I got trough all the four rounds. I met very competent and nice people, the interview process was as easy as a talk among professional who share experiences and pointers on professional technical cases.
Although I didn't hear anything for a couple of weeks after the last interview.
After I pinged the recruiter twice (with no answer) for knowing what was the state of the application, I finally been reached out by another recruiter (who I emailed myself). She/he told me that the main recruiter was on holiday (what about a out of office auto reply?!) and he would have followed up soon.
After some hours I received an email that stated that: "because my lack of experience with mobile and Unity dev they decided to drop my candidacy."
Conclusions:
I felt like a dodge a bullet.
Beside the four hours of my life that I spent on this application (and I will never get back) I wonder how the company and the production is handled.
Either they were making up a lame excuse to drop me gently (quite bad hiring practice, if you ask me) or they didn't know what they need and they spent 20 man/hours time interviewing a person who pointed out them from the very beginning the deal breaker for the application.