First call was HR call, went pretty smooth. then I was given a technical assignment (according to them takes 3-5 hours) to submit back to the HR in under 5 days. The assignment was actually much more than 3-5 hours, it was a use case where you need to create an agentic market research and analysis tool. Many requirements were set in the assignment, and GenAI is a must. 3 weeks after my submission, I got a rejection email. Now looking back at the whole process, it feels like a waste of time, especially that after this assignment, there was still a long way to go (3 more interviews, and one of them in-depth technical).