Why Clarity and Respect Matter in Hiring I applied for a Product Designer role, and the first step was to submit a video introduction, which I did without issue. After that, I was invited to complete a design task and have a call. However, the process was unclear about whether I should complete the task before or after the introductory call with the junior talent acquisition partner. When I tried to book a time slot for the call, the calendar system did not allow me to. I contacted the junior talent acquisition partner, who only responded a day later, asking if I could join a call within 30 minutes on the same day. The notice was too short as I already had another commitment. This left me feeling sceptical about how the process was being managed, even though I was genuinely excited about the design task. Two weeks later, I still had not received a follow-up email to book the call. When I finally checked again, the next available slot was another two weeks away, which further eroded my trust in the interview process.

A four stage interview process for a mid-level role (paying a Junior salary) which included: 1, Interview with HR 2. Technical interview Assignment 3. Competency Interview with the main stakeholder 4. Final Interview with the founder and CEO I only did the first two steps as my technical assignment was not good enough. There was a distinct lack of awareness throughout. I mentioned some technology acquired in the first stage, which the HR rep knew nothing about. In the technical stage, the brief was relatively straight forward but lacked any real depth, especially the Mission and Vision for MrQ - if you removed the mention of MrQ they could be applied to any company. My response to the task was good, but not good enough. The feedback given by the design lead was vanilla design stuff, which came across like they had just Googled "typical Product Design process" and regurgitated it back to me. In hindsight, I am very glad and happy that I didn't make it through, as during the process it became clear that MrQ is not a progressive company (even thought they claim to be), which is fine for people who want to coast in a job - but I would avoid if you are aspirational and value design.