Went through SEVEN hours of interviews (with a total of 10 hours invested) only to be told I'm not qualified for the job?!

Hi guys. Bit of a rant here.

I'm in the process of switching from my current career field to another. I've undergone countless interviews in the past two months (trying to get my foot in the door to my first position in this role), and made it to the final stages with 2 companies. We'll call them company A and company B.

Company A - I finished my final interview on Friday and received an offer letter yesterday. This company was my less preferred one between the two, but I'm just grateful to have an offer. So no complaints there :)

Company B, however, was a real disappointment and their practices were completely unacceptable. For starters, I was particularly excited about this job because not only was their starting pay higher, but the position itself seemed more interesting and their product is really one-of-a-kind. The benefits were fantastic, including company ownership (they're on the smaller side, but not too small).

Before the interviews even commenced, they had me do one of those God-awful 15-minute, 50-question assessments. This was a fucking nuisance, but I completed it and got a call the next day.

I had my first interview with the recruiter, and it went well. The second one went well too, it was a typical "tell me a time when" time interview. I moved on to the third round. This round was wild, as it was 2 interviewers (I was told it'd only be 1), and they had me prepare a presentation. Okay, fair enough. I spent a good 3ish hours preparing the presentation the night before. But what I wasn't told was, this was only the first part of the interview.. so once I finished my presentation, they had me do some ludicrous MS excel activity that was timed. They were testing the speed of my critical thinking and "aptitude", or something. (I thought the silly assessment at the beginning was good enough?)

They gave me feedback at the end that my presentation was fantastic, but my excel activity performance was subpar. That said, they advanced me to the final round.

The final round: FOUR one-hour interviews IN A ROW - 2 with senior reps, one with a director, and one with the CEO. They did not give me a break between. I joined one Zoom, and they hopped on one after another. Every conversation went the full hour. My throat was coarse by the end of the second conversation.

All things considered, I felt I did pretty well in each interview. I asked for feedback at the end of each one, and a common theme was, "you have great business acumen, you know what it takes to be successful in the role, and your background will really help you succeed here".

I gave thoughtful answers, was not stumped by any questions, and had pretty good chemistry with the whole team. I was feeling good and I thought I had this in the bag.

Then the next day, I get the dreaded rejection email. I responded, admitting I was surprised by the decision, and requested feedback. The recruiter gave me this feedback (paraphrased):

"The team thinks you have lots of talent and potential, but ultimately we are looking for someone who already has experience in this particular role".

What? What the fuck? Are you kidding me? Why didn't you just tell me that off the bat? I went through SEVEN HOURS of interviews, including 3 to prepare the presentation, only to be told that I should have been disqualified from the start? I was dumbfounded when I read that email. Still am.. obviously.

What kills me the most is all the positive feedback I received every step in the process. Every interviewer had my resume up on the screen, and made comments about my impressive experience, and how much of an asset I would be to the team with said experience.

I feel taken advantage of and lied to. I'm extremely happy about my other job offer, but the principle of this whole situation is just infuriating.

Thanks for reading!

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