TLDR: Disrespectful approach to candidates, their time, and effort. An extremely time-consuming task; all interview rounds, including task completion went smoothly with positive feedback, hiring manager seemed satisfied; two weeks after the task presentation (final round) a standard email from an unknown HR person; got ghosted when asked for feedback
I applied to the Team Lead for B2B Marketing position. I had a first screening call with an HR person, a typical HR interview. After a week, I had a brief interview with the hiring manager, where he explained the position and asked questions about my background. After a week, I received an invite to complete a task. The task was extremely time-consuming and not a general test of a candidate’s skills but an actual project, that would cost between 25K-50K from a marketing consultancy: Design a Marketing plan for Germany, with individual campaigns, and details of the campaigns, for all digital platforms, create a model of a lead generation pipeline with conversion rates, etc. It also included two sub-tasks: data analysis of marketing campaigns that the company had run (with fake data) and the company’s portfolio analysis. I submitted the task after a week and received positive initial feedback. I was told I shouldn’t do a presentation but rather be ready for in-depth discussion. After a week, I met (online) with the hiring manager and his boss. They still told me to do the presentation. It seemed to all go well and they told me I should expect a call sometime soon. Two weeks passed, no update. I emailed the hiring manager, asking if they had any additional questions. Later that day, I got an email from an unknown HR person, saying my work was appreciated but they were “lucky enough” to have a lot of candidates. I asked for feedback and got ghosted.
Generally, the company has great posture from the outside, all emails and the process seem professional, but it is clear there is not much understanding or appreciation of candidates or employees. The tech stack and internal processes also were not well-built or defined, and seemed more like a 10-person startup, rather than a scale-up.
I wouldn't recommend interviewing for this company unless you are very passionate about their product (for some reason) and willing to spend a lot of time on the interview process.