I was contacted via a recruiter. I had 2 conversations with the recruiter, with fairly specific questions about my background, experience and interest in the position. This lead to an invitation to come for an all day interview onsite at the Sigma 2 office. The place has a very "aren't we cool" vibe, lots of open space, wood, glass, and hipster people walking around. Everyone mentions the free snacks, etc. Again, they want to be seen as cool and hip. It gets a little annoying and repetative.
I interviewed with 6 different people during the course of the day, not including the 2 people who took me to lunch. Believe me, lunch - if you make it that far - is definitely part of the process. I was told that a lot of people don't make it to lunch or are told they are done immediately after coming back from the restaurant. All of the people I interviewed with were very nice, proud of the company, proud to work there, and eager to tell me why they thought I should want to work there too. The problem was that no one seemed to have a good understanding of exactly what job I was interviewing for. I knew what they needed and what the job would entail, but this was a newly created position and the people interviewing me really didn't have a clue. It was also very much outside the sphere of all the interviewers.
They tried to interview me as though I was another programmer, and that just didn't work. That wasn't the position at all, but it was like talking to someone who only sees one color.
The day was long and tiring, but I felt I had connected with most of the people I spoke with. I did not get an offer. I was told they decided to go with a "data jockey" - someone who could just load data into databases all day, which was not what they had told me they wanted. But he was cheaper and data loading was something they could understand.
Interestingly, I received a call from the recruiter several months later telling me that the data jockey hadn't worked out and would I still be interested in the position.