I applied online. I was contacted within a few days for a 30 minute phone screen. I felt it was a conversational interview. However, there could've been more specific questions that dived into my skills. The interviewer spent about 15 in the beginning of the interview speaking about Path background and history. This took up a good amount of time for a scheduled 30 minute interview but we end up speaking longer than 30 minutes. She told me the salary range of 95K-120k and the standard benefits that are offered. This is a small start up company so they are looking for someone who has experience putting everything together from scratch. This was my impression our discussion. She never questioned my experience in regards to handling such a task which is interesting now that I think about it. I had the opportunity to ask questions. I felt she could've expressed the hiring manager experience and personality better. I only got the impression that she is detail oriented and kind as she kept repeating that. I could tell she didn't have much to say as she directed me to check out her profile on LinkedIn. So I did. It seems the hiring manager has a lot of operational and marketing experience (hence title is related to people operational manager but no HR/benefits experience, so I felt that this person for this role would be an individual contributer to handle the benefits function with minimal support, direction, and no personal benefits growth beyond helping them scale because you need to handle the function as the SME. The job description gave me this impression already and the interview. My preference is to report to someone with some type of HR Benefits background. Ultimately, I was told that my information would be sent over to the hiring manager and if there was an interest then the next steps would be a interview. I was fine with this because I wanted to get know the hiring manager more to see if I was really a good fit for this role. I was sent a personalized email versus a automated rejection email that they weren't moving forward with a vague but understandable reason why. I still could've exceeded their expectations even with them being in a growth stage with my experience but sometimes they want to see that on paper versus taking a chance and giving someone a chance to handle that sold responsibility. I think if the hiring manager had more of a HR/benefits background, then probably I would've moved to the next step. I'm guessing they will hire someone who is a very experienced tenured benefits manager with HR success scaling small ambiguous companies throughout the U.S and has various certifications. Also, some other experience they might be looking for as she mentioned the role could grow into handling other responsibilities but there wasn't much detail on what that would entail. Nonetheless, I appreciated the opportunity to interview as every interview is a learning experience.