Applied online and a recruiter reached out shortly after to schedule a call, whereby it was clearly mentioned that there was going to be a total of 3 interview rounds after that phone screen. Things moved along relatively quickly, with the recruiter coming back to me every 2 to 3 days to arrange for the different rounds of interviews. In between, I followed Yahoo’s channels closely and observed that they had actually adopted some of the content ideas that I had shared with them during the interviews and was shocked, but I decided to just brush this aside in hopes of eventually getting hired. However, just before the third interview round (which was supposedly the final round as mentioned by the recruiter), I was told to complete a (lengthy) interview task prior, and it had included questions that were clearly out of my knowledge/expertise, but I decided to take things upon myself and attempt them anyway, and burnt my entire weekend just to meet the deadline. However, during the interview, the interviewers barely touched on the content of my assignment, and merely thanked me for giving very detailed explanations, which made me wonder if they had really through it at all. Nonetheless, I followed up a few days later, and the recruiter initially told me that they were still conducting final interviews, and would let me know in a few days. However, just 30 minutes later, she came back asking me to head down to their office the following week for a physical meet-up with colleagues in the team as a final interview. I was surprised by that because the previous interview was supposed to be the final interview based on her earlier instructions but when I questioned her about it, she insisted that she already told me about this at the very start (which she clearly didn’t) and this was going to be a culture-fit assessment rather than work experiences, but I didn’t want to pursue things further and just went ahead with this “final interview” the following week. A few days after this “final interview”, the recruiter sent me a note saying that the team would come together to make a decision the following week, and she would then give me a call early in the week to inform me of my application outcome. Almost two days of the following week came and went and I didn’t hear back from the recruiter at all, so I decided to follow up and ended up getting a canned email response from her that they had decided to move forward with another candidate who was more experienced. All in all, this was a very unfair and time-wasting interview process that dragged for more than a month, with 5 rounds in total (does Yahoo think they are big tech?). For starters, their job ad was very misleading as it mentioned that the scope of work would be tailored according to the candidate’s expertise, but it was only made clear during the final interview stages that the hiring team was actually looking for a master of all trades, and not someone who specialised in one area. Additionally, the hiring team could add in assignments/interviews along the way as they wished, just to buy themselves more time to make a decision, whilst stringing potential candidates along and keeping them on stand-by until they have finalised things with their leading candidate, which was extremely selfish of them as a lot of unnecessary, precious man hours had been wasted. To everyone out there who wants to interview with Yahoo, please think twice before doing so - I am not the only one who has encountered this negative experience, there are countless similar reviews out there from all across the world. Please do yourselves a favour and read them thoroughly before you decide to commit to Yahoo’s string of lengthy interviews only to get a canned rejection email at the end of the day.

I had my first interview on June 16, second interview on June 22 and the final, four-person panel interview on July 11. Throughout the above time period, my recruiter was responsive and followed up often. The day after my panel interview, my recruiter called and told me I would be hearing from him on Tuesday with a decision, because, in his words, "he can't legally say with an offer." I took that as a great sign and couldn't wait for Monday. The next couple days came and went, and my recruiter ignored my attempts to follow-up and get an update. Finally, after several days, I got a quick call saying I was their first interview, but I was the leading candidate -- they just want someone to compare me to. I was told I'd hear from them the following week. The following week was crickets, and I tried following up at the end of the week, and received no response for two weeks. I tried following up one more time and got an OOO message, which forwarded me to another recruiter, who contacted me after hours, within minutes of my email, with a sense of urgency on my behalf. The following morning I received an email from my original recruiter, saying they will let me know something the next morning. Surprise, surprise, the next morning came and went with no word. After reaching out to the other recruiter who showed a sense of urgency, I received word that they were moving forward with interviewing someone else. So, about a month after my final panel interview, I finally received a definite answer. I am not sure if I had a poor recruiter, or if the hiring team's communication with the recruiter suffered hiccups, but I spent several hours interviewing and speaking to the hiring team and the company -- ghosting a candidate and stringing them along for several weeks AFTER their final interview is no way to treat people. For what it's worth, the hiring manager and the four-person panel were all great to talk to and provided me with an excellent interview experience.