This experience has by far been the most uncomfortable and unpleasant during my times of job hunting, and I’ve had at least 20 over the years My contact was mostly through the executive director. The first 4-5 interviews consisted of phone/video/and in person. I had to follow up with several people on different days because they were not in the office at the time of the interview. During my original phone interview I was asked if I had children or if I planned on having any. This is completely inappropriate. I don’t have any, so I didn’t lie, but if I did or was planning to it’s clear this would affect my hiring status. I was THEN asked if I was seeing somebody or had a partner. I mentioned that I did have a boyfriend. It seems like he was trying to gauge (extremely unethically) how much distraction from any job I would have in my personal life. Next he asked me for my last salary which I told him was illegal to do in California. He doubled down and said it was for this and that and to know what they’d need to pay me. Yes, sir, that’s exactly why California began protecting employer rights. These questions should have been a red flag, but weren’t. I ended up going through TWO 7 hour working interviews (they were paid $25 - I would pay that much to not have to do a work interview). After every interview I got a set date from the ED about when I would hear back. So set even, that he would say “we really want to get going with somebody and now waste your time. At least 3 times I was given a time by which they would make a decision. He never responded on time which was difficult to navigate with other interview opportunities. Finally, after he didn’t respond to me for over a week after he last promises to get back to me (after my second in person interview)....I realized this was a no-go. But just to add some insult to injury, he called me with a grandiose “I wanted to tell you in person that we’re continuing to search for somebody with more ophthalmology experience” First of all - thank you for stating the obvious. I figured that almost two weeks after my 2nd in person interview you weren’t going to hire me. Second, not having ophthalmology experience was the clearest, most obvious point about me as a candidate since they first looked at my resume. Did I need to waste like 20 hours of intervening for you to see that? Also - he called 5 of my references and kept them one the phone for up to 25 minutes. During one call with a reference, he tried to network to set up a referral situation with my last employer’s contractor. He was wasting my references time asking about business deals when the call was meant to be about me. NOTE - they call your references before you are the final candidate. I would have never allowed that. Thanks to him I had to come crawling back to all of them asking for another reference just a few weeks later, promising that this time the employer would not be as intense and time consuming. I don’t normally rate interview experiences because my opinion is it has more to do with a match between candidate any employer, however, I chose to post this as a caution for professionals who get entangled in their interview process. They do not respect your time, references, or personal boundaries.