First two rounds happened quite quickly, both of which resulted in a positive response at the end of each interview. The second round with the hiring manager happened while she was at the airport at 8:30 AM because she was flying on holidays, which I was happy to accommodate despite my concerns of bad audio connections. After this I recieved a case study to work on and to record and send a video of the presentation for which the expected time was only 2-3 hours, which was completely unrealistic due to the exahustiveness of the response that was required. Anyhow, in the 3rd round interview which was supposed to be the Q&A for the case study with the hiring manager and another team lead, I received amazing feedback on the case study, mainly the words of praise and the rest of the interview were a mix of skill based and leadership questions (which they didnt give me a prior warning about). The questions were going in many different directions considering that the title "head of brand" is just an umbrella title for the role that would actually cover many very different teams and different skills. Due to the fact that my previous company had a similar set up, my skill set was the exact mix of what was required in the job description. However, the questions they asked were not specific enough which resulted in complete misjudgement of my skills. Few days later, I received a call from the recruiter to reject me and deliver me feedback that I was missing skills in two areas needed for the job: dealing with online communities and data informed decision making. After I told him this is completely. badly judged and wrong and emailed him a reference letter from my previous manager in which these skills are mentioned in a very positive manner, he offered a call with a hiring manager to deliver the feedback directly. 3 days later I got a call from her which she starts with a praise for how I demonstraded deep understanding of the brand (which you'd think is critical for the role) and how my background in social is super strong and important for this role, then she moves onto the reasons behind the rejection and completely changes her spiel from what the recruiter previously said. The 3 points were again, flawed, first one again my lack of experience in one aspect of the work, which I had facts to back up to show how wrong this claim was as the previous company i worked for also sold physical products not just d2c software. I received an apology "on behalf of glow25" for this misjudgement and moved on to the other two points which were complete nit picking. The claims were that from some of my answers they werent sure what im bringing to the company, and how i would handle myself in meetings (with 18 years of experience, 9 of which in team leader roles) and the work i delivered to them to this point showed the skills I am bringing to Glow (which was even ackowledged). And the last one on leadership, they expected a templated answer to the leadership question of how i treated an underperformer in my team, to which I honestly answered: that I had a fantastic team and never had this type of problems, and I had different types of problems as I had to fight for their rewards and protect them from overloading, which i strongly believe is a trait of a good manager. The response was, "yes but we want our team members at glow to be independent enough so they dont need protection." who said my team members were not independent enough - one thing doesnt exclude the other.
Anyhow, I feel completely mistreated by company and the hiring manager. I invested so much time, I delivered everything that was asked of me, I was very accommodating in this 5 round process. But in the end completely misjudged. Above all, in their job spec they said apply even if you dont have all the skills because we want "diversity" and inclusion. I had all the skills for the job, if the two points which are her subjective impression are the reason for rejection, then there is something severly wrong in this whole process.