I had a screening call with a recruiter which seemed fine, it looked like they were looking for someone with my experience and she moved me onto the next round. But when that next round with the actual team lead began it seemed like I was interviewing for a different job. Suddenly the skills the recruiter said would not be a priority were super important to have, and I was rejected for not having skills that were never on my resume to begin with. This company needs to do a better job communicating with their recruiters about the job expectations because they basically wasted their own time and mine by reaching out to me.

Downsides: very long breaks with zero contact along the way. Ghosting after the final. Upsides: Final interview was a four hour shadowing where I worked with two different developers to see how I'd fit with the team. While I do like the hands on approach when I actually did get to speak to someone, being left hanging for a long time and then ghosted for two and a half weeks after a final interview is incredibly frustrating and disrespectful of my time. I can't tell if they're stringing me along or just ghostey instead of "hey, we're passing", but I'd like to warn others going in that this is how they are.