Homebound interview questions

An initial interview and then a second interview after completing a ridiculously long assignment. Even if you are the best most experienced candidate, they will probably go with someone else who "looks" the part.

I applied for this position and a recruiter reached out to me a few weeks after my application was sent in. This was just the introductory call; I wasn't even speaking with a hiring manager yet. I was unable to schedule a call any sooner than 10 days from when I booked it. I attempted to reach out directly to book an earlier time, but never received a response. When the day came to take this call, I was unsure if it was even going to happen as the recruiter called five minutes later than our scheduled time. Overall, this was one of my least favorite interviews. The conversation did not flow well at all, the process did not feel smooth, and I felt that I was talking to myself the majority of the time. The recruiter was blatantly reading the job description word for word during our call, because I also had it pulled up at the time for reference. At one point, the recruiter asked a question that I answered, only to be followed up with the same question immediately after. So I attempted to give the same answer again with different wording. At the end of the interview, I had a list of 7-8 questions to ask the recruiter regarding the role. I was only given a response to one of these, as the rest would need to be asked to the hiring manager. Very discouraging as not all of these would have necessarily needed to be answered by a person on the specific team for the role; some were general questions in nature. When I asked about the salary, I was given an enormous range with a rate at the bottom that is much below what the market rate is for this position and the requirements. I just felt as though there was never any sort of alignment throughout the entire process. There was no sense of productivity on this call. By the time it was over, I regretted waiting 10 days to even have this conversation. I normally leave interviews feeling excited for the opportunity and thankful to connect with a member of the organization. But this was the exact opposite. I ended up getting rejected two days later, but didn't feel as though I would have wanted to pursue regardless of that rejection email.