As others have described, you are asked to write a pretty absurd paper, then do some odd tests which aren't related to the ability to complete real world job tasks, then you are dropped directly into 3 interviews. I went through all of that w/out a phone screening, which I knew was a red flag. So maybe 6-7 hours of my time, and their company time (likely per candidate) is burned because they don't do a quick initial screening lol. It's a heavy process, and we all know: if it's heavy, then it's expensive. Turns out I was dropped after my third interview for lack of actual management experience. This was something a phone screening would've told them in less than 15 minutes, but their internal process seems incredibly disjointed. If the interviews had been in another order, they would've known sooner, as well. Honestly, if they glanced at my resume, they would've seen this. I don't know how I made it through the HR process. The paper has been described elsewhere. It's 100 questions about your past. I chose a few and answered those, didn't take the time to address everything. The test includes looking at the letter R in four positions to determine which R's match when rotated. It also includes determining which of three numbers is furthest numerically from the middle number, along with two or three other types of mini-games. A scammer likely sold the idea of the tests to a canonical exec, who adopted it as a way to be cute. It means nothing and is a waste of everyone's time. The first interview, a series of technical questions, was not only outside my area of expertise, but didn't align with the technical area of the team I was applying for. The interviewer, also the first person I actually spoke with, knew nothing about the team, their makeup, workload, etc. It wasn't particularly difficult, just didn't really align. This left me wondering if anyone had read my resume or paper at all. The second interview was great, in my opinion. The interviewer had experience with the team, was balanced in answering my questions with positive and negatives about operations, and was asking some very light questions in the area of expertise related to the role. This being a good experience was the only reason I moved forward. Really, though, they were phone screening quality questions that I didn't feel encouraged to answer in any reasonable technical depth. Third interview was fair, and I felt like they were justified in dropping me after it based on some poor phrasing of questions and answers on my part. Again, everyone could've saved a ton of time had they just prepped a small list of questions for a phone screening. I would've dropped me at this point, too, but it would've been nice if they put just a little more thought into why standard practices in hiring are STANDARD instead of trying to be unique or cute. Let's break this down: Each interviewer had been at the company 10+ years. Assuming their salaries are 250k (conservatively), an hour may cost the company $125 per FTE, so my interview process, including an hour reading my terrible essay, cost Canonical about $750. If I were billing the same rate, it would've cost me, personally, the same amount (writing, tests, and interviews). If they had 6 slots open and 6 candidates, that's $27000 of their money flushed into this drain. That's before the cost of the batch license needed to test every candidate, loss of opportunity to spend that time on revenue generating activities, etc. That's the benefit of having an HR grunt ask 10 questions up front.