I have never come across a company who shows such little respect for someone's time as Techstars showed during my interview process.
I had progressed through to the final stage and even then, the process was exceptionally long-winded. To do just 2 interviews it took nearly 4 weeks as each time I progressed to the next stage, it would take them 2 weeks to organise the next step.
Naturally, I was applying to other jobs and was offered a role at another company. The Techstars team seemed personable and I initially thought it would be a great place to work so immediately contacted both the in-house recruiters who were handling my application. I explained to them that I had been offered a job elsewhere and politely asked for an update on my Techstars application as at this point, I gave them the benefit of the doubt and still ranked Techstars highly enough to turn down the other offer if they were progressing me. I even emailed the executive that interviewed me to ask for a response after having not heard back from the recruiters and with the other company waiting on my decision.
Days, weeks, a whole month passed and I had no response so I assumed rejection. This was disrespectful enough as every candidate deserves to know the status of their application let alone if a decision has been made. However, I didn't want to let their abysmal time management affect my job prospects so continued with my job hunt.
Low and behold, exactly one whole month after emailing both the in-house recruiters and the executive, they sent me the most incredibly blase and ignorant email stating that yes indeed, they were and always had been interested and that they would be progressing me to the final stage. They explained that they didn't reply to my initial, highly time-sensitive email because it was Thanksgiving in America. I was shocked at them giving such a laughable excuse to justify the pitiful state of their recruitment management. The fact that that they had the audacity to believe that not responding to someone for one month was reasonable really cemented my belief that this would be an incredibly disorganised and unpleasant place to work.
Luckily for me, I had already accepted and in fact had even started at my new place of work because they took so long to progress my application. I hate to think how many good candidates they have lost along the way because of their shocking disrespect for candidates' time. A glance at other interview reviews with Techstars evidently shows this is a recurring theme.