I recently interviewed for the Junior Marketing Manager position at First Batch and found the process to be unnecessarily long, tedious, and poorly structured for a small, relatively unknown company. There were six or seven rounds in total (each person I spoke with gave me a slightly different answer about the process), including several hour-long interviews and a creative assignment after the third round. For a junior-level role, that’s an excessive amount of time and effort to ask from candidates. To me, it gave the impression that the company overestimates its importance while undervaluing the time and energy of the people applying.
Throughout the process, the focus seemed to be less on skill or experience and more on “fit” with company culture. While culture is important, the questions were underwhelming, sometimes repetitive, and occasionally felt more like personality assessments than meaningful discussions about the role. It was also made clear that employees are expected to wear multiple hats beyond the listed job responsibilities, including some outside of standard working hours and on certain holidays. While that’s not unusual in marketing, it’s worth noting.
After a few weeks of interviews, I received a short rejection email with no feedback. For a smaller company, the process feels overly inflated and self-important. The experience showed me that while First Batch wants to appear highly selective, their approach ultimately signals poor respect for candidates’ time and a lack of clarity about what they actually need in the role.
