The interview process took about 4 - 5 weeks from when I first submitted my resume online to them contacting me for a brief intro interview over the phone, to a more formal phone interview to my project I submitted.
The people I spoke with were friendly and nice. They were semi-knowledgeable about IXL and were able to answer 70% of my questions I had about the company, position, and products. They weren't able to answer some of my more important Qs, and I was told that I would be able to get those answered later.
During the formal phone interview they ask a brain teaser. I have a big problem with this. I understand the purpose is to see how the interviewee thinks, but these types of questions have been found to be pretty much pointless when determining, well, anything. For an EdTech company, this is a little worrisome. Regardless, I made it through that round.
I was then tasked with creating a feature and putting together a document that highlighted my feature, how it would work, what it would do, what its potential draw backs would be, etc. I put together a 7 page document submitted it, and then received a "thank you for applying, it was very competitive" email from them about a week later.
While I was saddened that I didn't get the job, I understand that these things just don't work out sometimes. My feature may not have been my best work, maybe I wasn't a good culture fit, maybe I made someone mad when I questioned part of their business model, I don't know and won't ever know because after they sent me the "thanks for applying" email, they cut off all contact and refused to provide me with any feedback.
This was infuriating to say the least. If it were after the 1st phone interview, or even the second interview I could justify them not getting back to me with notes on why I wouldn't be making it to the next round, but after having a me create a project feature plan they couldn't spare 5 minutes to tell me why they decided to go a different direction? Their refusal to respond was both rude and inconsiderate, and left a very bad taste in my mouth. If you ask a candidate to generate material the least you can do is provide some basic critiques and feedback.
This may just be personal preference, or latent frustration / anger, but I also was not a fan of the order of their interview process. When I didn't have my original questions answered, I was told I would have them answered at another time. I was never able to get those questions answered as I was assigned my product feature task. My questions would have had a direct impact on my feature design. Additionally, I never once set foot in their offices or got to meet the team I would work with. This seems like a weird way to order interviews and to ask a person to provide a deliverable without ever really getting to know the people and place you want to work at.