Oh, where do we begin? Imagine prepping for a leadership role at a company that builds literal aircrafts — only to be met with an interview process that couldn’t even take off the runway. A complete and utter cabin-pressurized mess. The recruiter was so rushed and couldn’t even take a moment to breathe. From the outset, this felt less like an interview and more like an exercise in performative HR theatre. The role? German-speaking Team Lead. Me? Native German, fluent, experienced, and quite literally the candidate profile their JD was begging for. But instead of jet fuel, I got tap water. Each round felt like talking to a different team reading from a different script. One didn’t know what the other had asked. One didn’t even seem sure what the job was. Internal alignment? Grounded. Clarity? Missing. Energy? Absolutely DOA. And after delivering clear, confident, STAR-powered answers — including executive-level cross-border stakeholder strategies — I got… nothing. Ghosted, of course. No feedback. No human decency. Just a button pushed somewhere. If this is how they assess leadership, I shudder to imagine how they build anything.