I applied for the Community Manager position while I was already an active ‘Elite’ member of the Yelp Community in my area. What followed were possibly the most stressful four months of my life, which gradually started to take a toll on my mental health. After submitting the application and waiting around a month to hear back, I had an initial phone interview with the line manager for the position, followed by an interview in-person with the same manager. A few weeks later I was then asked to do a phone interview with another Community Manager in another city. It was moving a little slowly, but so far, so good. Then things went quiet. After weeks of waiting, they got back in touch and told me that I was still in the running, and asked me to put together a mock version of the ‘Weekly Yelp’ newsletter on a subject of my choice. I did this, taking hours and hours of research, and then... silence again. The hiring manager eventually got in touch and apologised for the delay and told me that they’d be back in touch in the next few days, but it was actually several more weeks until I heard from them again. In the meantime, it was emphasised that I must remain active on Yelp and continue writing reviews and interacting with other members, particularly in welcoming new members to the site and encouraging them to keep posting reviews. I was told that the higher-ups at Yelp would be keeping a close eye on my profile behind the scenes to decide on my suitability for the role. Essentially, I was expected to act as if I had already got the job and to provide Yelp with free content and engagement with its users, while I waited around for them to make a decision. When I did hear from them, it was with yet another stage of the process: a list of written questions that they needed me to send my answers to ‘ASAP’. One of those questions asked me to ‘plan a Yelp event for 50 people’, complete with a list of local businesses that I would use for the event, a detailed breakdown of costs, a theme for the event and an exact running order for the evening. Again, this took hours of research. And again... silence for weeks and weeks after I had sent it. By this point I had devoted days of my life to the application process (at no point during which, by the way, had they ever mentioned the salary for the role) as well as weeks of sleepless nights waiting to hear something back from them. Eventually - several months after my first interview for the role - they finally got back to me with the most lukewarm rejection I have ever received. I was told that they ‘might’ still give me the job but that they were going to ‘keep looking’ for a couple more months first. Most frustratingly, after so much time and effort put into applying for the role, they refused to even give me any proper feedback on my application. Instead I was brushed off with a vague comment about how my performance at all stages had been stellar but that the senior managers just weren’t sure whether I was the ‘right fit’. These were people who had never taken the time to meet with me or even speak to me on the phone at any point during the process. Throughout the process it was very clear that Yelp have a very high opinion of themselves as a very ‘special’ place to work and that this therefore justifies an extremely long, stressful and insulting recruitment process. But if this is how they treat prospective employees then I cannot imagine what it must be like to actually work there. Eventually they did give the job to someone else, and I consider it a lucky escape because that person was laid off again just a few months later!