1st interview was standard HR screening. 2nd interview was 1-on-1 with CTO. Mainly asking about my background and experience. HR recruiter had reached out saying they "heard great things" and would like me to do a take home "test automation" assignment. I spent about 15 hours throughout the week doing the assignment, writing up a very detailed readme to explain my entire thought process behind all the decisions I made. I had some fellow QA peers review it, they thought it looked great and I submitted it. Next was the assignment presentation to the CTO and three other individuals from the development team. The format for this, I'll admit, caught me off guard. It seemed to me that nobody had looked at my submission beforehand and they wanted me to do an open ended presentation on it. I'm not great at doing long winded presentations like this and I was a little confused on how much detail and info I should be going into. Combine that with just having met these folks and being an introverted type of person and I felt very nervous and flustered in this situation. I basically went through my readme which is where I had outlined my presentation. Afterwards they asked me some follow-up questions on why I did the project the way I did, what I would do in certain situations. I got the indication that I was answering their questions satisfactorily and the team seemed positive at the end of this assignment review/interview. Fast forward a few days later, I get an email from HR that they have decided to go with another candidate. Now, and this is just my opinion, but if you've gotten a candidate to the point that you're giving them a lengthy take-home assignment, they should be the candidate you have chosen amongst others by that point, not giving multiple candidates these assignments, people have lives and other interviews going on. If that candidate completely fails the assignment (I don't think I did) then you go back to your pool of potentials. Also, if you have someone complete an assignment it would help if the folks participating in the assignment review would have reviewed the submitted assignment, not just rely on an open-ended presentation in Github by the candidate. This definitely made me feel like my time and effort was not appreciated.