Pepper Construction interview questions

Spoke with HR initially who setup an interview with IT leadership. I am being as generic as possible to avoid self identifing. The conversation with HR was the starting point and it went well. Spoke with the head of IT and that went well Spoke with the manager of IT and that also went well. Did not hear back for a week, which is probably typical. Found out they had received an internal referral. I deduced it was either a Pepper family member as they are all over the internal workings of Pepper or a close friend of their family. It is my opinion they had no desire to hire outside of Pepper, but only to give appearances of looking outside. I am sure this is a good place to work, but if you even get a hint they have other "internal" referrals, you can bet, no matter how qualified you are, in whatever field you are in, they have no intention or hiring you. I would not interview for Pepper again and if you have any sort of valuable talent, go to their competition and contribute there as Pepper only hires family, friends of family or someone they owe a favor to.

I was contacted by a recruiter for a position with Pepper Construction and completed a phone screen with their HR representative. While I appreciated the initial outreach, I never had the opportunity to speak with the actual hiring manager; which felt like a missed opportunity, especially given my experience aligned well with the role. It was unclear why the process ended after the HR screen, and no detailed feedback was provided. If my background wasn’t a fit, I would have expected to be filtered out earlier rather than going through an unnecessary round. More direct communication or a chance to speak with the technical team would’ve made the experience more meaningful.