I recently went through a 5-round interview process with HelloFresh, only to be told they found another candidate who was a better industry fit. This was particularly frustrating as I know two other candidates who received the exact same feedback after multiple rounds of interviews with them. To make things worse, two days after informing me, they reposted the same job description on LinkedIn. It feels like a significant waste of time, and I would advise other candidates to consider this before engaging with their interview process.

First call was with a recruiter who asked a bit about my motivation. The calls ends with a set multiple coice questions which basically determine if you are qualified to make it to the next round. However, the next round is directly a take home assessment. Without having spoken to any other member of the team of tech staff in general, I was sent a homework that would encompass: - analyzing recipe data using spark - building testing around the routines - building ci/cd using docker - conceptual questions on spark perfomance tuning The task is not overly complex but solving it completely ,I put a good amount of work into it. I had sent it in time (in total 7 days time for the task) but did not receive any feedback after 9 days. I had to actively ask for current status, just to receive 30 mins later a generated rejection mail that my solution had potential but was not good enough. From my perspective this is a sign of missing respect towards applicants. My thoughts: - do not ask candidates that sort of homework in that early stage - be specific in terms of what your expectations are for the solution - provide feedback what the solution is lacking! - be timely and proactive - dont expect candidates to deliver a homework within 7 days and then ghost after/come back after being asked for it I hope this company will overthink its hiring approach and attitude towards applicants who put their free time into this process.