Paired interview questions

The interview process had more stages than really needed, and a lot of them covered the same ground. I ended up answering almost identical questions in 3 separate interviews with different people, which didn’t feel very efficient or like the best use of anyone’s time for a senior role. The part that stood out the most was being formally interviewed by a potential direct report who was quite junior and seemed to only know this company’s way of doing things. In my whole career, I’ve never come across a setup where a direct report is responsible for assessing someone who would be managing them and having a say in their hiring. This very bottom-up approach makes it harder to introduce new perspectives or challenge existing ways of working, which is particularly relevant when a company is looking for fresh thinking or change. Overall, the process felt disjointed, and it said a lot about the organisation’s maturity, decision-making, and overall leadership style.

The interview process was quite long for a designer position, had 5-6 stages with a design task that took way over the '4 hours' stated on the brief. It was also an unpaid challenge which does not feel very ethical and necessary when designers are judged based on their portfolios already. Nevertheless I completed the task and got through to final round, just to be rejected based on something that they knew from round 1 of the interview. Not a great interview experinece overall, and would suggest optimising the recruitment process to save the candidate's time.