1. Applied online and after 2 days, I was invited to complete a long questionnaire, with a few HR questions plus several role-specific questions, which led me to believe that this step would somehow replace the usual first HR call (as HR call is usually the first step) and be used as the base for subsequent interviews. I spent a lot of time (on a Saturday) completing the questionnaire. I treated it seriously and gave out a lot of details about my work experience and the challenges of some projects I worked on in the past.
2. After 3 working days, I was asked to provide my availability for the next stage interview. I responded immediately but was slightly disappointed to find out that the final scheduled time was one entire week after and this would only be an initial chat with HR (a week is pretty long during a hiring process, not to mention that I already answered, in the questionnaire, a lot of questions that would usually only be brought up in the second stage interview with hiring managers)
3. After waiting for an entire week, I was finally able to chat with HR. It was a friendly chat, however, the existence of the questionnaire and the fact that I took the time to answer those questions in detail were not mentioned and acknowledged at all. Some small questions I already answered on the questionnaire were also asked again. The recruiter did mention on the spot that she would move me forward to the next stage to chat with people from the team (so I naturally assumed that - then this was just a brief HR screening, and the next stage would be the occasion where everything I'd written in the questionnaire would be further discussed since a lot of those questions were role-specific).
4. The second stage was scheduled pretty efficiently. I met up with two other people in the relevant team 2 days later. They were friendly of course but the interview was not well-structured. Not a lot of questions were asked and the ones that were asked somehow limited our discussion about my actual experience, skills and strength. At this point it was also very clear to me that the questionnaire I did was pointless. Had they read all the answers I gave in the questionnaire, the interview would have been structured in a completely different way and we could have had a much more interesting and insightful discussion, which would for sure lead to a change of impressions of one another. In the end I did ask directly about the questionnaire and they were clueless about it, which made me speechless.
I really want to like this company but unfortunately this was a very negative experience for me. Using a questionnaire as the first step is actually a great idea (it can actually replace the first stage HR chat in my opinion to make the process shorter), but surprisingly it was not implemented and followed up properly (not even acknowledged!). As a candidate, I feel disrespected and the whole thing feels like a waste of time.
If you want a candidate to answer so many questions even before the brief HR chat, then acknowledging that and sharing the content with all subsequent interviewers is the bare minimum, especially since there are a lot of role-specific questions (not just salary expectation type of HR questions).