April, thank you for sharing this in-depth summary and analysis of your experience in applying for the role of Product Designer at VMWare.

My question is this: If you polled each of your interviewers with the question, “At what point in the hiring process did you feel confident that I was the optimal candidate?”…how might they respond?

I ask because in my opinion, all of this ‘dog-and-pony’ show that you describe (mostly past part 3) seems unnecessary.

I can understand the team wanting to reduce all possible risk of hiring someone who will not fit in with the team, is unable to effectively communicate or do the job, and who is likely to grow the most in this role.

But with the right rubric in the hands of the interviewer, the right kinds of written and visual assets from you about your design thinking, and the right mindset within the group to trust someone’s opinion of a candidate, then everything beyond part 3 could have been avoided — with a ~80% chance that you were the right candidate.

To summarize: in my opinion, teams must improve their ability to write effective job descriptions, effectively research a screened candidate online by requiring and reading that candidate’s published work, and ask the most appropriate questions for the role in one focused interview — all in efforts of sparing the candidate from a circus show of repeatedly proving their worth to this team.