The HR contact no-showed or rescheduled the initial screening twice before it actually happened. That’s not a minor scheduling issue, that’s a red flag. Once in the process, the interviews were thorough in a way that felt extractive rather than evaluative. Detailed questions about strategy, channel mix, and execution… the kind of conversation where you’re doing real intellectual work. Then, silence. No follow-up, no response to outreach. Shortly after, the job description was updated to mirror talking points from the interviews, newly loaded with AI buzzwords that had no grounding in anything the hiring team could actually speak to. The entire hiring team was a single person: a Finance VP with no marketing experience, not adjacent experience, not transferable experience, zero. He could not speak to how marketing decisions get made (apparently the CEO says yes or no, it’s not a conventional process whatsoever), how budget gets allocated, or what success looks like for the function. If you’re expecting a hiring process that can actually assess your marketing expertise, or a manager who can advocate for the work afterward, you won’t find either here. Make of that what you will. Compensation is below market for the scope of the role. Numbers mentioned early in the process weren’t backed by approved budget. Verify before investing significant time. The person before this role was open left in under a year. Pattern recognition is a skill. Ask pointed questions about reporting structure, who owns marketing decisions (Finance, lol), and what their AI strategy actually means operationally (they don’t know). The answers (or lack thereof) will tell you what you need to know.