I was invited to 2 interviews at the same time. These were the 3rd and 4th stages of the Graduate UX Designer recruitment process. This was after completing the online tests and video interview 9 months beforehand. For these interviews I took 3 days off work to prepare for and actually attend the interviews. The first interview was actually a group session with the only 2 other candidates for the role. We were given a task that was meant to test our collaboration skills. The task was to solve the problem of "you are on a yacht in the middle of the ocean, the yacht catches fire and you all have to leave on the lifeboat. You can only take X amount of items with you. What are you taking?" We were then given a list of items and left to debate which items we would take and why. This was a interesting interview and actually quite fun. I did enjoy this exercise, however, it was very odd to be on video call and collaborating with people who are essentially my competition? Very odd experience but fun nonetheless. The second interview was described as a "competency" interview. My idea of a competency interview would be a interviewer asking me questions like "give me a example of when you demonstrated ***** skill?". However, that is far from the interview I had. Firstly, the interview was supposed to be with myself and 2 people from the Sage UX team. However, when I logged on to the call there was only 1 person from the Sage UX team present. I was told right there on the call that the other member of the team couldn't make it to the interview. I found this extremely unprofessional and would have expected the interview to be rearranged to when they could attend, but no, we continued with the interview. Then the UX team member went on to conduct the interview by first telling me a little about himself and the role he plays at Sage. He then asked me "so why don't you tell me about yourself?" and that was it, that was the only question I got the whole interview. I was expected to essentially give a presentation of my entire working life with no questions or prompts about anything specific. This totally threw me off as I wasn't expecting this format at all but I'm not sure if I misunderstood what a competency interview is or if this wasn't actually a competency interview at all and never should have been called that. Regardless I went on and spoke about myself. Later in the interview I was asked to show examples of my UX work. Usually I would prepare examples to show but for this interview I hadn't. The reason I hadn't is because I asked before the interview if I needed to bring anything/ prepare examples and I was told no. That it wasn't that kind of interview. So its fair to say I was caught completely off guard when I was asked, during the interview, for examples of my work. In the end I had to scramble to try and bring up something I could show which didn't go fantastically well. After this experience I was pretty confident I wasn't going to get the job. But the one thing I did expect was to actually hear back from them after the interview to tell me I hadn't got the job. I was told repeatedly throughout both interviews that all candidates would hear back from them whether it was good or bad news. However they never got back to me. I was completely ghosted by them. The following weeks I emailed them twice and asked if there was any update but I was ignored. There was only me and 2 other candidates and they still couldn't be bothered to send me a rejection email. After I had been through 4 stages of recruitment, took 3 days off work and waited 9 months, they couldn't send me a simple email saying I hadn't got the job. I find this highly unprofessional and disrespectful. Safe to say I didn't have a fantastic experience.

I applied for the role and was given a video interview. It was very easy to get started. It involved 5-6 questions. They invited me to an assessment which was held online due to the COVID-19 Situation. It was very relaxed, everyone was extremely friendly. I and others had to take part in a team activity which showed the assessors our team working skills and mindset behind making decisions. I then had a one hour interview with two lovely people from Sage about my experience and had to do a small presentation. They are lovely people and I definitely recommend Sage as they are a great company.