The application process was handled by a third-party recruitment firm. If there is one word that could describe the entire process, it would clearly be "incompetence". The interview in their offices was based on 'topgrading', which is essentially a way to threaten a candidate into believing that everything they say will be confirmed by reaching out to references, and it essentially tries to instill a truth serum into your answers, to separate the bottom-of-the-barrell candidates from the true A-players. Well, the reality is that hiring doesn't work that way. Asking me how I would rate myself on a job I held 6 years ago, and explain how my manager would rate me (between 1 to 10), is simply silly and insulting. The fact that the CTO interviews candidates and asks questions based on the 'topgrading' technique is a sign that the company has seen its fair share of candidates or people that ended up being liars or poor performers once hired, and that the company simply doesn't trust candidates based on their answers, without being threatened to get background and reference checked. Unfortunately, spending 2 hours telling your life story and all jobs held in the past seems to be fine and normal for these people, and based on the information I gathered, it seems that they do have some inconsistent practises on delivery of their projects and the actual work that is done in-house versus how much of the work they actually outsource to other agencies. I truly believe that they want to hire someone that doesn't have the capacity to reflect on how they conduct their business. I don't think that their screening method is effective, and it only seek out obedient individuals that are oblivious by the fact that no top performing company would take topgrading as their only measure of performance for any candidate, or individual for that matter.