Rainforest QA interview questions

Everyone I met throughout the entire interview process, I enjoyed speaking with. However, I don’t know who was making the final call on things, but things were not handled great towards the end. Interview process: -Met with Director of Customer Success -Met with 3 members of the team 30 min each -An email outreach assignment. Draft an email response based on a given prompt + Present a mock call presentation to the members of the team including COO -1:1 meeting with COO -1:1 meeting with CEO Right before my scheduled interviews with the 3 members of the team, I had received an offer from another company. I got on a call with the People Operations Manager, who has been scheduling all the interviews, and I was completely transparent with the offer and how much I was offered. I wanted to make sure what Rainforest QA would be offering would be in the range of this new offer. They told me yes so, I continued with the interviews. I completed the presentation and did receive some feedback on some things I could improve on. In all, I received positive feedback including that from the COO. After I received an email to meet with the COO. At this point, on my end it seems like a strong indication I would receive an offer. That call went great and now I was scheduled to meet with the CEO, which is an even stronger indication that an offer is incoming. One of the emails mentioned “we plan to move ahead with an offer”. After that call I was asked for reference checks and sent those over. The next day, which was a Tuesday I received an email saying there was some scheduling conflicts and they wouldn’t be able to complete a reference call till Friday. Keep in mind that I already have an offer in hand and by Friday it would be 2 weeks. I had been in contact with this other company, and they told me that Friday would be the deadline when they’d need a response. I responded to Rainforest QA asking if there was any way possible to escalate the final process. So, I would have everything on the table as soon as possible to make my final decision. I’m not sure if it was due to my response but, the following day I received a generic email thanking me for my time and saying how I would not be a fit for the role. Really? After going through this extensive process and even meeting with the CEO the best you can do is send me a generic rejection email? You couldn’t even give me a call? I was frustrated since the entire process I had a good sense everything was going well so I asked for some feedback. The apparent reason was they didn’t like my response for the email assignment and there were too many things I didn’t do well during the mock presentation that they saw would be important in a customer facing role. Huh? If this was the case, then why was I even moved forward to meet with the COO and CEO? Why would you waste my time if you knew I had another offer in hand? Better question, why would you waste your CEO’s time with even meeting with me if you thought my “skillsets and experiences are not quite to the level they think it needs to be successful in this role”? I would have been less upset if I was just rejected after the presentation than stringed along and lied to with “we plan to move ahead with an offer”. Thankfully during this time, concurrently I was finishing up interviews with another company where I ultimately received an even better offer. All I have to say is please mindful of your candidate’s time, especially if they have an offer in hand that they were so generous in being transparent with. In hindsight, it was better on my end I didn’t receive an offer here. I don’t think I wanted to work at a company that laid off 2/3 of their employees.

They made you go through 9 interviews and an assignment that takes you hours to complete then decided to go with another candidate. I hope the decision makers can be more efficient and to respect other people's time.