I applied for the position in January, 2022. After a quick HR call (which was scheduled after my CV was shortlisted for the position), I was given a take home task with 1 week to complete. I really liked that the project was already setup for the task and assignment was to another endpoint which was very interesting. I completed the task in about a day and then submitted for review. I informed the recruiting manager as soon I was done with the task. However the task review took 8 more days after task completion deadline (almost 2 weeks since task was submitted for review). I proceeded to next step, which was technical interview. Technical interview was more of a conversation around my experience and general thoughts around Microservices, Monoliths, Python and Databases. Overall I felt interview went great and signed off happily as I also got some of my questions answered. I was told that it would take around a week for them to respond on next steps, and I would know either way (if I make it or not). Week later I got an email that I have not made it to next round due to quality of applications received and not only interview performance played a role in the outcome but also work culture fit is unmatched. Overall the process was smooth albeit slow. You are paid for the take home task which is fantastic. My only suggestion would be to have more transparency and detailed feedback on why candidate is rejected based on technical interview performance as that feedback is probably already summarized internally to compare the applicants, and its only matter of sharing it at that point? Sharing detailed feedback makes more sense to me because at that stage of the recruitment process, company has already invested on the candidate to some extent (paying for take home task and engineering time spent on interviews), so why not make Hotjar even better place by sharing rejection feedback (who makes it to interviews stage of the process) to help the candidates for their future opportunities?