The process up to the on-site was straight forward enough, until I got on-site that is. Most of the panel I had been told would be interviewing me had been changed. I went in there to interview for manager position but the majority of the 12+ people (yes, that many) were asking me testing questions, and were ICs. I was confused about what was happening. Furthermore, I asked who I would be reporting to and who I would be managing. Received responses of "not sure" by the most senior people on the interview panel. Really? A few more things: -They have some never heard of titles for their managers and their responsibilities. I have no idea why they set it up that way. -They are clearly growing their teams too quickly and it seems that proper thought is not being given to the expansion as evidenced by the size of the org, the structure or process. -Due to said above expansion, they are going for straight headcount over experience, as experience costs more. -Final thing, they expect their managers to be ICs for the first three or so months before they take on the team. Both good and bad to this approach, but something to be aware of.

1. Applied on Indeed.com itself 2. Recruiter reached out for initial screening interview and submitted feedback to the hiring manager 3. Interview with the hiring manager 4. Moved up to the interview loop 5. Total of 5 interviews as part of the loop including technical (IC level) and management interviews split in to 2 days - Technical interviews were around different type of manual and automated testing - Mentorship interview - Management interview - Closing interview, mostly about how everything went. I’m sure the overall intent behind the interview structure is well however I don’t think it necessarily helped the hiring manager make a well informed decision. Why? Because no one who interviewed me while in the loop, was on the hiring team itself. I was given a chance at the end of every interview to ask questions, but no one could answer them effectively because, guess what, no one was actually part of the hiring team so the answers were very generic and didn’t not help me that much. Especially when different teams at Indeed have very different team structures, technology, methodologies. I felt it wasn’t fair to either the hiring manager or the candidate. I understand whoever doesn’t get an offer tend to provide a negative feedback but to their defense, the interviews were well intended but did not work even for them. I kind of lost interest on the second day of the interview. That was the day of the management round, which was essentially the repeat of my initial interview with the hiring manager. That annoyed me a bit and hence may have affected my performance. Many companies do the loop, but the hiring team interviews the candidate and gives the candidate a chance to know the team.