I applied online through their website. 11 days later, I was asked to schedule a phone interview with someone from the team I would work with. 2 days after that, I had the phone interview. It lasted maybe 15 minutes. She asked me questions about my current role and briefly went over the position. I researched her beforehand and her position/experience. She asked some kind of left field questions. For example, "Give me a detailed business plan". I don't have a business degree, nor did the position have that as a requirement, or mention anything remotely similar. But, knowing she came from a prestigious business school, it made sense why she felt the need to ask. However, it had absolutely nothing to do with the job. Somehow, I made it through that. Before I could even send a thank you email, she reached out with the next steps. My phone interview time slot was 10-1030am and I received an email to move on to the next step at 10:18am. So the first phone screen clearly wasn't too in depth.
The next phase is to complete a case study. She asked me to complete a standard operating procedure for a customer interaction as well as an implementation plan for that procedure. I was pretty excited about this so started right away and completed it within a day even though she gave me a week. I did both a visual one and a text version. It took them 11 days to respond to my case study and scheduled a second phone interview.
The second phone interview wasn't with a hiring manager or anything like that. It was with someone who was in the SF office. They chose him because he happened to write some operating procedures for the company. So I guess it ties in with the case study I did. This phone interview last 45 minutes. We went over a lot of specific position-related questions, but also just chewing the fat. I thought this call went a lot better than the first since we actually discussed the position and I felt like I really got to know the position and company and realized how closely my current role aligned with this one. He didn't ask any hard questions, or things that threw me. It was more job specific; "how important do you think a customer interaction is?" "What should be the first thing you do when you meet a customer?" Very specific customer oriented questions. He gave me some great feedback on my case study and how he appreciated both versions. He left me feeling optimistic.
5 days after the second call, I was told I would not be moving forward. Curious as to what happened exactly, I reached out to the second interviewer and asked for feedback. In the end, an assumption on his part, made them believe I was not the right candidate.
Overall I would urge them to
1) Be very specific about what they're asking for in a candidate
2) Do not leave any room for assumptions to be made. Be clear and up front about what you are expecting from a candidate.