First is a recruiter screen. Second is a 30 min call with the hiring manager. Third is a day of 30-45 min zoom calls with the entire team (6-7 separate interviews) After my final interview, I was ghosted by the recruiter despite two follow ups. I finally received a generic rejection email two months later.

I pulled out of the interview process after a few rounds due to some concerns which are discussed below. The process was casual and comfortable. The people that I dealt with (all UX people and one lower-level industrial designer) seemed very nice but I felt did not have the aptitude nor understanding for true and complete Industrial Design. (ID). Very standard design questions (see concerns below as to why I believe this was the case) were put forth and my positive discussion w/ the interviewer went longer than the scheduled time which I thought was generous on their part. Round 1 - Phone screen w/ Talent Acquisition / HR Round 2 - 45min to 1hr video call w/ hiring manager Round 3 - Present three projects from your portfolio to the team. **I pulled out after this round for reasons explained below.** The salary, benefits, initial equity grant and 401K plan were fair for a San Diego based position.  Bonuses were on the low side and weren't being paid out in full due to Covid reasons. Strange, as Illumina has been faring well during the pandemic and has also been an integral player w/ regards to vaccine research and development. Absent were deep questions regarding industrial design (i.e., What is your process for building a design language? How do you validate your designs w/ the user? How do you devise design attributes/drivers per product line and what is the connection b/w said attributes and the consumer? What is your user testing process and how do you resolve a discovered pain point within your physical design? (Amongst many more important questions) Concerns: Although I did pull out of the interviewing process, I want other Industrial Designers to have a transparent view of how and where ID fits within the ecosystem of Illumina - as of March 2022. 1. My biggest concern dealt with how this UX team hires. Rather than build a top-notch team of diversely experienced individuals from around the US (or world) who can bring a wide realm of perspectives and capabilities to the team, the User Experience hiring team appears to reside in a comfort zone of hiring industrial designers from their go-to Bay Area design agency - Native Design. If you do your research on LinkedIn (as of today), you will see a common hiring thread. I know this as fact as I have ex-colleagues who work at Illumina who have made me aware of this habit. Note: These ex-colleagues are not part of the UX team but they do work very closely in parallel with UX. 2. Another concern (in my opinion) is the fact that Industrial Design reports in to UX managers within the organization - which UX manager that is depends on if you are based in San Diego or Foster City/Bay Area. This is why I believe the interview questions were textbook and why they did not delve deep into the core breadth and scope of Industrial Design process/execution. ID should work in tandem w/ UX but should not report in to a UX manager as UX people do not fully grasp anything remotely close to the full gamut of Industrial Design. 3. I posed questions with regards to how and where they see ID fitting into the company's future (i.e, What are the long term plans for the ID group; Do they plan to build out the team; Where do they see ID leading the organization; Etc.). The interviewer seemed to have a tough time answering these questions and couldn't give solid answers; hence, the responses were ambiguous. What Illumina needs to do is hire an Industrial Design Manager from outside of their comfort zone (not the Bay Area bubble) - place this person under R&D but collaborate closely w/ UX - and allow he or she to build the team as they and the organization see fit. Once again, being a veteran industrial designer, I did not have a comfortable feeling with regards to how a company such as the size and importance of Illumina was handling the inception of a very integral department and who this department was reporting in to.