I had a disappointing and frustrating interview experience with DLA Piper.
I had an online stage one interview with two people: the Head of Development and another UX Engineer. The interview was mainly to discuss the role in general, as well as answering questions about both technical and soft skills.
Both interviewers were friendly and I felt that the interview went extremely well.
Unfortunately, I didn't receive an invite to the second interview stage, with the reason being my technical skills were "too heavy" and that I didn't have as much experience as another candidate that they had chosen.
Firstly, I can't understand how my technical skills can be "too heavy" and how my experience can be "too little" at the same time, when the two things are mutually exclusive. The job advert did not specify a salary or level of seniority or experience required either.
Furthermore, if my experience was in fact too little for their expectations, then why did they invite me to interview in the first place? The whole thing felt like a waste of time and effort, as my experience level could have been determined by looking at the CV.
My overall feeling was that I was overqualified for the position and they hadn't realised until the interview, but they did not want to admit that.
They said that they had been struggling to fill the role and had been recruiting for 10 months, and I now know the reason why.