It was a mess of unorganized, and I'd also say unprofessional. But they've had these positions open for months without filling them, so I'm not terribly surprised.
The interviewer canceled our 30 minute appointment last minute. Her response made me question if she'd reach out again, so I took it upon myself to schedule a different time. She then, last minute, asked me to speak on the phone in 20 minutes the day before our reschedule. The interview was no longer 30 minutes, but 15, as she had a meeting to attend.
She didn't introduce herself and barely asked me any questions at all. She also didn't take any time to talk about the position or the company. It felt very rushed and like she didn't care. As we were wrapping up I pointed out that she had hardly asked anything and that I could keep trying to ask questions to do her job, and so she asked one more - what was my biggest takeaway from my last workplace I was at for 4 years. Quite the vague question and, I think, impossible to really answer. When you work somewhere that long, you have a lot of takeaways from a bunch of different areas.
One of the questions I asked was what they were looking for with this position. I was told that the senior designer has no experience in the ad tech space, so they are hoping to hire a junior designer with a bunch of experience in the ad tech space who can help the senior out. That felt to me like they're getting the roles reversed. Junior positions are supposed to be for newcomers in the industry. They aren't supposed to have a bunch of years of experience already, and they certainly aren't supposed to have more experience than your senior. That response felt like a big red flag to me. I got their rejection email at 1:50 in the morning. Glad, frankly. Pattern is growing fast and it seems like an interesting platform. But some of their business practices seem really suspect and they need a recruiter who actually does the whole recruiting thing.