Applied online early January 2025, a couple of days later was invited to complete an online game-style assessment. I heard nothing back and was then contacted 3 months later, April 2025, giving me one weeks notice that I'd been invited to interview. The role was >150miles from where I live and they did not offer to cover travel costs.
Whilst the interviewers were nice, the whole interview experience felt cold and slightly bizarre. There was no small talk, and the interview itself felt very robotic, with interviewers simply reading out questions from a sheet that centred largely around education ('tell us about your MSc', for example - no questions about why this role, why WSP, my personal strengths etc), and provided very little opportunity for discussion of anything beyond this, despite me trying my best - I appreciate of course this is sometimes the case, but I think it's important to say that (i) I am a career changer and so I have years of relevant experience that I was given almost no opportunity to discuss and (ii) even when I'd said that actually I'd gained further experience since application, there were absolutely no follow up questions or comments. It came across as if they were simply trying to get through as many interviews as possible, and were completely disinterested in what I actually had to say.
There was an opportunity to ask questions at the end, at which point I asked how much opportunity there is for graduates to work with, or see the work of, other departments (relevant because the role I applied for is very multidisciplinary) and the interviewers seemed completely offended that I'd asked this, and responded by saying that they like graduates to stick to the roles they are doing. I found this to be completely bizarre.
I then waited another month for confirmation that I had been unsuccessful. This was following me chasing a number of times, and being told repeatedly that I would hear back 'early next week', which of course I never did.
I found the whole process frustrating and left the interview feeling disheartened.