Interviewed first with recruiter, then with engineering manager, and finally the multi panel interview. The recruiter was mostly understanding the position and my experience. Engineering manager interview was more of the same with some technical questions about my experience. The panel interview involved a take home project followed by reviewing it with the team, then a general tech interview, and cultural. I’ve interviewed for many companies and left very confident in my performance. The interviewers loved my coding solution and and the tech and cultural panels went awesome. In the end, unfortunately I was rejected due to them hiring an “internal” candidate. I felt utterly defeated of course. I couldn’t help but feel strung along just so they could say they interviewed external candidates and eventually go with the internal no matter the result. I was set up for failure despite the tremendous effort on my part. I no doubt feel that in any other scenario I would have got the job. I know I aced everything. It’s just so frustrating to know that all the effort I put in was essentially a huge waste of time. This was even with having references in the org that all vouched for me.