The first one I had encountered was the HR interview which was mainly the admin questions regarding employment. The second one was with the hiring manager. The hiring manager was relaxed and asking on point questions.

I went through the recruiter screen, then a 30-minute competency interview with the hiring manager, and reached the final stage where I presented a case study. It was obvious during the interview that they didn’t like the example I chose. In the feedback, they said they rejected me because they wanted someone with stronger pre-concept/early-concept experience. I actually have plenty of experience in that area, but the case-study brief didn’t mention this, and neither the recruiter nor the hiring manager highlighted that priority. They also didn’t ask any pre-concept questions during the presentation. Weeks later, the recruiter sent me an unprofessional copy-and-paste rejection email, accidentally including a line where the manager told them to “next time screen for pre-concept experience correctly” which came out negatively. The whole process felt disorganised and left a negative impression of the company.