First off, why is it so hard for companies to be transparent when it comes to the hiring process? If you don't want to move me forward in the process because of "XYZ" reason then just tell me. We are all adults here and as long as you come across as professional with your response then there's no need to be vague and/or sugarcoat things. With that being said I applied for this role online and was sent a follow up to schedule a screening call which ultimately went fairly well. We were limited on time, but covered most of what I wanted to get from them and them from me. When I inquired about salary expectations, instead of giving me a number I was told it should come in around what I was looking for, but not as the base salary, but with other comps paid out at the end of the year. To be fair, that deterred me slightly, but she was really eager to get me moved along to the next interview so we set up that call. That next call went well too. We covered the role more and instead of the standard "How would you achieve this?" style of questions she wanted to get to know me to see if I'd be a good fit culturally. Her words were that she already knew I could do the job in my sleep so there was no need to get super formal. I liked that. The resume should speak for itself. I asked her about compensation as well and how I wasn't really given a definitive number and she was open, at the time, and said that the base and the comps in total would be $10K under what I was looking to make, however she really liked me and was putting me on her "very shirt list" and was going to make a case to increase the base salary by $10K (plus the additional comps) to get me where I wanted to be. I felt really good coming out of the call. Honestly $10K a year isn't all that much and should easily be accommodated especially for the right candidate and I was told she'd personally follow up that week to let me know the next steps. That never happened. Instead I got an automated email from the first person I spoke with saying they weren't moving forward. No explanation given. I was confused because it was made to sound like I was on a very short list and was essentially their front runner for this role. I responded back asking for clarification to which I got another fluffed off response (at least from the initial screener and not a bot) that "when it came to determining who may be the best to move forward to the next interview stage they needed to be even more selective." Yeah, that doesn't answer a lot and left me even more confused. My only thought was they weren't going to budge on the salary increase. I was going to just leave it at that, but it just kept nagging at me wondering if $10K really was what prevented me from moving forward. As Wayne Gretzky once said, "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take." so I decided to ask if that was indeed the reason. Their response was as follow: "I understand your question. There are a variety of factors that go into considering how candidates will progress in the hiring process." That was it... You say you understand the question, but then do not answer it? So yeah, by not answering you pretty much screamed it from the rooftops that you'd rather go for low budget hire than to shell out just a little more money to get a quality candidate. I was willing to set aside the negative stuff I read on here about people burning out, poor work/life balance, and high turnover because the person during the second interview actually addressed those concerns and was very open about where they failed and steps they were taking to move forward and not have that happen again. Good job acknowledging the issues and growing from there in that aspect, but maybe your hiring team needs to take the same approach?