Received an email from the CTO, requesting a phone screen. The CTO had no signature block in his email,so I assumed I was emailed by an internal recruiter. Even during the eventual phone screen, I had no idea that I was talking the the CTO, until I asked him to clarify his title.
One week later, an onsite interview was scheduled. Two days before the onsite interview, I received an auto-generated email from the company, stating: "Thank you for your interest but you will not be moving forward in the hiring process". Confused, I emailed the CTO to confirm that my onsite interview just 2 days away had been canceled. He responded that the interview was still on - the email had been a mistake (?)
At the on-site, I was immediately provided a laptop, and was given instructions to browse a test version of the company's web application and find bugs. This was a test, and the objective was to find a set number of bugs. After this test, I was given a different laptop for a different test, with instructions to find different bugs with different test version of the company's website, and enter bugs into JIRA. As a senior level candidate, this was the first time that I've ever been given tests like this to determine my QA skills, and indicates that they didn't know QA interview questions to ask.
After these rather long tests was a quick technical Q&A by the DEV team. End of the interview. The staff was pleasant, and the interview itself was pleasant enough. What wasn't pleasant, however, was the contradicting feedback that I received in the weeks that followed, to keep me "on the hook" with misleading statements, then a complete absence of a final decision.
After about a week of no type of feedback, I emailed for a status update. I received a response to wait another week, to allow them to decide between another top candidate and myself, and my specific salary expectation was requested, which I assume was to help them decide on their final candidate (which I didn't provide). That week came and went, so I followed up again for a status. I received a response to wait another week, because the CEO was out of office, and he had to approve all offers. That additional week came and went.
I emailed for a status. Received no response, the company went dark forever, but I did notice that they did removed the QA job posting from the job boards. Did they give the offer to the other candidate? Or did they maybe lose budget and have to pull the position instead? (a tiny company, its a possibility).
Who knows what happened or why. Its a bit unprofessional and discourteous, to not receive any type of a final decision, after being told to wait by a C-Level officer that I was being considered for an offer, and is why I rated this as a "negative" interview. This is a red flag of poor management, and who wants to work with/for poor management? Certainly not me.