Went through a grueling, months-long interview process and ended up getting ghosted. It was the most bizarrely structured and confusing experience. After their recruiter reached out to me and connected me with the hiring manager, I completed multiple panel interviews with teams that didn't have a great grasp on the position I was up for (they chalked it up to this being an “evolving” position that was going to be mostly curated by the person they would hire), plus a ridiculously long writing assessment that honestly felt like free labor. I felt compelled to ask the recruiter what they planned on doing with the writing because it was so extensive. She vaguely asserted it was for assessment only, but the amount of work was akin to building out the entire lifespan of a product. The review below mine does a deep dive that’s worth reading. I find it suspicious that they duck out after receiving this work. Anyway, after many a reschedule, the founder cancelled an hour before the final interview. I had stuck with it up to this point because I was already so far in and had exerted so much energy and effort during both the interviews and the writing assignment, but to end on this note was the biggest red flag of them all. No surprise, I never heard from them again and didn't bother reaching back out. Bottom line: how companies treat interviewees during the process can reflect how they treat people internally. They clearly do not value the time of others and have unreasonable expectations and questionable integrity.

HR reached out to me and asked me to apply. I did, despite several red flags stemming from my interactions with the talent acquisition person. The screening interview was standard and shortly thereafter, I was scheduled for a meeting with the hiring manager. I felt that went well. Sweet or so later, on a Thursday evening around 7 PM, I received an email from Talent Aquisition informing me that I had 24 hours to complete a “copy test.” Essentially, she was telling me at the last minute that I had to call in sick to my existing employer or pull an all-nighter if I wanted to be considered for employment at Thrive. I rushed home and opened the test, only to find that it amounted to a MINIMUM of 6 hours of work. Essentially, they have you develop several products from scratch, compose all the related marketing materials, write a full-length blog post, and create several eComm campaigns. All of this is fine if you are familiar with the brand but if you are not, you can’t just whip these things up; you must constantly refer to existing product pages, etc. to maintain the brand voice. I decided this was an exceptionally unprofessional request and wrote her back saying (nicely!) I needed the weekend to complete the assignment since I couldn’t afford to miss a day of work. She replied telling me it was fine. Huh? Then why tell me I had 24 hours to complete it in an email sent after work hours? Anyway, I turned in my completed test and heard nothing for a week. When I heard from them again, I was told they were setting up a marathon 1-day, 8-person video interview sequence so I burned a vacation day to accommodate it. 8 minutes before the video session was supposed to start, I was informed by HR that I would be presenting my copy test to a large group— I frantically pulled the thing up and read through it to refamiliarize myself with the content I hadn’t seen in about two weeks. There were approximately 30 people in the large group and I did my best despite being given no direction, instruction, or guidance. It was uncomfy and awkward. After that, they broke into the 8 separate small meetings. Those were fine, most interviewers were very professional and nice and the questions were relevant. One exception was the woman who asked me “What year did you graduate from college?” which is code for, “You seem too old.” Extremely embarrassing, not to mention offensive. All in all, it went very well and again, almost everyone was completely delightful. Then…nothing. One week, two weeks, three weeks…nothing. Completely ghosted. I sent two emails that were never answered. After I missed days of work, gave up most of a weekend, and actually established some rapport with a few of these people, it’s astounding to me that the company would be so unprofessional as to simply disappear, but that’s what they did.