A recruiter reached out to me based on my experience and informed me that they had an opening she thought aligned really well with my background. I said, "Great, I'm happy to hear more about it!"

The phone screen with the recruiter went very well, and she was the highlight of the interview process. She was very good about staying in touch, professional, and made the experience personalized and well-organized.

I had a first-round interview with the VP of Delivery Enablement, to whom this role would report directly. It went really well.

I moved on to a second-round interview with the lead Agile Coach, which also went very well.

Finally, I had a third-round interview with the Director of Technical Program Management. Though she asked many difficult questions, some requiring internal company knowledge to answer sufficiently, I was able to showcase my knowledge and problem-solving skills.

Next, they gave me a "practice exercise" which was to solve a real-world problem they were running into as an organization. I played along, though I should have charged them consulting hours. After spending several hours on this and presenting it to the VP and Agile Coach, leaving them speechless with my two solutions, I thought I had it in the bag.

The recruiter called me a few days later and informed me that "though the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, they wanted someone who could jump right in and make an impact. You were absolutely the top candidate, but they have decided to cancel the position at this time." I got the impression that they dropped this on her out of the blue as well, and I could tell she genuinely felt bad about it.

So, you give all applicants a "project" to solve your problems for free, then cancel the job opportunity altogether? Hugely insulting and unprofessional. If they were unable to make a decision for a hire, I wonder what it's like actually working there.

Again, a major shout-out to the recruiter for being the most professional of all and making the otherwise useless experience somewhat pleasant.

Create a comprehensive solution for the per-domain prioritization stack ranking problem within Jira Cloud. Use any plugins or 3rd party apps you prefer. (This is consulting territory, not an "example of your skills")