I started with about 5 back and forth calls with a recruiter before moving on to an online webcam interview. In this what they call Hireview interview, basically I recorded my answers to 5 different questions to be later reviewed by the recruiter and regional and district managers. After about 4-5 weeks into the process, I had an in person interview with a district manager and regional manager. Everyone was pleasant to deal with for the most part.
For my first official phone interview, about a week after my first contact with her, the recruiter was past an hour late when I called to ask if she was ready. She then told me she would call me back in 15 minutes, without even so much as a, "Sorry." The conversation went well and about a week later, she got back to me to tell me I was moving along in the process and was to submit a Hireview interview online. After another week or two of waiting, she let me know that the regional manager had reviewed my Hireview and was very interested in meeting with me.
When I got to the interview at a cafe, there were two interviewers instead of the one they had told me would be there, which was fine, but I would have preferred to know that prior. I was unsure of who they were at first because I was looking for one person and I saw two interviewing someone else well into my allotted interview time. I called and texted the regional manager whose information I had to figure out what was going on, to no response. I then emailed, with no response, then called the recruiter to figure out what was gong on. She told me that the two were the two that would be interviewing me, so I waited. They were not ready for me until 30 minutes after my interview time, putting me in a bad position with my current job, which was an hour away by train and awaiting my return. The interview was pretty standard and I felt I did a fantastic job. The employee who referred me received a serious complaint from his boss about the amount of information he shared with me about the company which I shared in my interview. He reported that to me and five minutes later, I got a call from the recruiter, telling me that they had other candidates with more related experience that they were going to pursue. The problem is, no one told me that the information was sensitive or shouldn't have been shared with me, and even so, I would assume that since I already have the information it would be more of a liability to cut me from the hiring process. The employee referring me didn't know the sensitivity of this information either and was taken back by their response as well. I'm not sure what happened here, but from what I understood, I was geared up to move forward in this process without an issue.
With all of the time I put into this process and my background, which definitely is sufficient for this entry level position, there's no reason why I should have been cut so suddenly except for some sort of bureaucratic issue, that has nothing to do with my qualifications or how well I could have represented the brand. I found this all to be extremely unprofessional and unfair.