A recruiter reached out after I applied to do a phone screening. Overall the recruiter seemed pretty inexperienced and did not talk to me very professionally. When I asked about salary range, which is standard to ask about early on to make sure you're aligned with what the company can offer, he said something like "Okay! Getting the awkward question out of the way..." Like he made it awkward saying that. I am not uncomfortable in the least asking about salary, it's due diligence at this point.
I interviewed with the hiring manager not long after, which went okay. I really liked her and thought she was straightforward, but maybe a little too casual for a first interview. She told me that the job description for the job I applied for wasn't the what they wanted to post because "HR wouldn't let them". Huge red flag. That means I applied for a job that I don't even know what the responsibilities are? She told me about their plan for the role and it did not line up with the description. She also shared that the company requires anyone who lives within 50 miles of headquarters to commute 3 days per week, which said that no collaboration or anything really comes from going into the office, it's just required but "no one checks." Sounds like an arbitrary corporate policy to me. Those two items stood out the most to me and made me question if this role was even something I wanted. Not long after, like within hours, I get an email from the recruiter to set up a second interview.
The second interview as interesting. The one person called his colleague my name a couple times, which was uncomfortable. I asked many questions about the role and job description, and received similar answers, mainly that this role could be anything and they weren't sure exactly what it would be since the job description that I applied to was not accurate. At one point during the interview, the two interviewers had a discussion about an internal matter. That was uncomfortable while I sat there, during my limited time for this interview, waiting for the interview to continue. Overall, I liked the two interviewers, but they did not seem experienced in interviewing since they decided to have a discussion not at all related to the question I asked and ignored me.
Ultimately they didn't move forward with me, and honestly, I'm glad. There were several red flags during my interviews, I'm just mentioning the highlights above. It sounds like internally, this company is very disorganized and perhaps has very pointless corporate rules and policies.