The home assignment (designing and implementing a Taboola-like widget) took several days to complete. At the end of the process, I was told that the assignment didn’t provide enough signal to understand my qualities or reasoning. If that’s the case, I’m genuinely trying to understand why this assignment is still used—especially given the time and effort it requires from candidates. I was also told it’s okay to use AI tools, but then the feedback implied that using AI was a negative. That feels inconsistent and puts candidates in a confusing position about what’s actually expected. In addition, the communication around feedback was frustrating. I didn’t receive feedback proactively, and even after requesting it, the feedback was very minimal. I’ve interviewed at many companies, and this was the most disappointing experience—mainly because it required a big investment of time and energy without a clear evaluation outcome. I’m sharing this because I think the process could be improved significantly to be more respectful of candidates’ time and clearer about expectations and evaluation criteria. I completed five interviews, and the final outcome was “JS level is not good enough.” If that’s true, I don’t understand how I passed multiple stages and only then was rejected for such a fundamental requirement.