Applied online and was invited to a panel interview. The panel were polite and the process was organised. The interview itself was friendly, but the balance of questions leaned more toward soft skills and general stakeholder handling than testing technical MEL delivery in depth (framework design, data quality, analysis, evaluation planning, and how evidence is used to drive decisions. As a result, a candidate with no MEL role experience was hired, reinforcing the sense that the process prioritised presentation skills over role specific MEL capability.