Refugees International interview questions

I was contacted one month after submitting my application. The interview was done over the phone with three staff members: Senior Advocate, Admin Assistant and Advisor. It lasted about an hour. Many of the questions were difficult to answer as they were very abstract. The questions assumed me to know the organization's 2019 strategy which was not public and to my knowledge, had not even been finalized yet. The interviewers were kind and helped clarify questions when I asked. They told me they were interviewing a handful of candidates and they would make decisions within one week about who would advance to the next round. I wrote a thank you note and after a few weeks still had not heard anything. It was the holidays so I expected there to be some delay. I did not receive a response so I followed up again. Nothing. I had actually read a review on Glassdoor about this happening to another candidate and just assumed it had been a fluke. Unfortunately not. Essentially I was "ghosted" by the organization. I found this extremely unprofessional and will not waste any additional time with this organization. I have also shared this story with my colleagues in the field.

I applied for the position online in early August and received an email from the office manager about a phone interview three weeks later. The phone interview was with the Director of Government Relations, the office manager, and one of the Senior Advocates. It went well and I was emailed a little over a week later about coming in for an in-person interview. The in-person interview was with a panel of four people. Again, the interview went well and they asked questions related to my previous experience and strategy for the organization where it concerns interaction with US government. A week later, I received an email from the office manager asking me to complete a writing assessment as the third phase of the process. I was to create a US government strategy based on the policy recommendations set forth in RI's recent report on donor fatigue in the DRC. The assessment was challenging but interesting and I had 24 hours to complete it. The major downside, and the reason I rate the overall experience negatively, is that after a month long process and three phases of interviews, I did not receive any communication from RI for over a month and a half. I followed up via email three times to ask if they needed anything further from me and inquired about the time frame of the selection process going forward, yet received complete radio silence. Their office manager finally sent me an email letting me know that I was not selected for the position in mid-November. While I understand that they are a busy organization doing important work, their failure to send a quick email letting me know that they had not yet made a decision was unprofessional and disheartening. I hope that they can work on internal processes in the future to ensure that others aren’t left in the dark for so long.