Five rounds at a mid-sized tech firm: a recruiter screen, a hiring manager conversation, a ninety-minute case study presented to four team leads, a peer chat, and a final conversation with a VP. Six weeks, start to finish. Every person she met, she said, told her she was the frontrunner.
The last round was a fifteen-minute call with the VP of Operations. He was in his car, on his phone, and asked two questions — one of them about her college GPA. A rejection email followed.
The recruiter had described the final round as “just a cultural formality” and said an offer would follow. It was neither — and a single short call undid six weeks of work. Her only regret, she wrote, was not turning the fifth interview down.