I had an introduction interview with a Ramsey Recruiter. They asked basic questions about qualifications but also what if anything I knew about Ramsey and their beliefs/ideologies. After that interview, I had to complete a design challenge that I poured a lot of time and effort into despite lacking any real direction from the product brief. I had to create five different assets with a variety of details. I spent over 20 hours on this and was only given five days to complete it. I didn't mind doing the challenge because I love this company and wanted to land the gig. A week after submitting the recruiter raved about my project and what they liked, but that they decided to move forward with other candidates. When I asked what was not to the team’s liking she said, something like, "They wanted to see a bit more work from your portfolio and would have loved to see you push your idea on the challenge 10 - 15% more.” This is frustrating because those answers are so arbitrary and don’t tell me anything that I could be better in the future. The design challenge was drafted in such a way that it was left very open-ended as to how to execute it. I believe this is the main problem with design challenges, if you use the same challenge for everyone (which they do because I found a plethora of past submissions on dribbble, behnace, etc) eventually reviewers are going to become biased with what they feel is the right solution to the challenge leaving everyone else at a disadvantage in the future. She did tell me that if another position opened up and I applied, I wouldn’t have to do the design challenge again… So what was the point in the first place? Overall, I’m just really bummed because I love Ramsey and their mission, and would have loved to be on the team. What is even more disheartening is that had I made it further there probably be another 4-5 more interview steps to go through after these first two.