This was my first interview process for an industry position while I was finishing graduate school. The process began with a 30-minute phone screening with Talent Acquisition. The recruiter provided a thorough overview of the role and asked standard background questions such as "Tell me about yourself" and "Why are you interested in this position?" Overall, it was a positive and informative conversation. The next step was a 45-minute phone interview with an electrical engineering team lead. This discussion focused more heavily on my technical background, research accomplishments, and previous projects. The interview was generally positive, although one comment stood out to me. When I asked what differentiates successful engineers at SpaceX during their first six months to a year, he began his response with something along the lines of, "Well, here at SpaceX, we only hire smart people..." While I understood the broader point he was making, the wording came across as somewhat off-putting. Aside from that, the conversation was productive and professional. The final stage was a 45-minute virtual interview with the principal optical engineer, who I assumed would have been the hiring manager for the position. This interview felt somewhat awkward because the interviewer never turned on his video feed, despite the instructions I had received indicating that candidates should have their cameras enabled. To be fair, the instructions also noted that interviewers may keep their cameras off if they are working in a classified area, so I assume that was the reason. Even so, I believe the conversation would have felt more engaging and collaborative if we had been able to interact face-to-face. The interview itself focused heavily on technical questions involving optics and optomechanics, including topics such as diffraction, thermal expansion coefficients, and holography. What surprised me was the lack of discussion about my own background and experience. At one point, the interviewer stated that he had seen optical communications experience on my resume and proceeded to ask questions about optical transceivers. However, I had not listed any optical communications experience on either my resume or application materials, so I am still unsure where that impression came from. After clarifying this, I attempted to steer the conversation toward my research, technical accomplishments, and relevant skills, but the discussion remained largely focused on testing specific optical concepts and theoretical knowledge. While I was able to answer many of the questions, some covered topics that I hadn't revisited in several years during my PhD research. As a result, the interview felt less like a discussion of my qualifications and problem-solving abilities and more like an assessment of how much specialized optical knowledge I could recall from memory at the time. The following day, I received an email from Talent Acquisition stating that the team would not be moving forward with my candidacy because other candidates possessed more directly applicable technical expertise. Overall, I found the process somewhat disappointing. While I understand that not every candidate will be the right fit, it seemed that the team may have been seeking a background more closely aligned with optical communications than what was described during the earlier stages of the interview process. If that was a primary requirement, I believe that could have been identified earlier, potentially saving time for both the interview team and myself.