The process started with an interview with the company's recruiter, which was a rather negative experience. The recruiter told me everything I had going against me, not just at CHG, but everything I lacked in my job search overall. Even though he was going to recommend me for an interview with the hiring manager, he said it wasn't likely that the manager would want to speak with me, due to the aforementioned weakness. So when the interview was over, I felt not only discouraged by my chances to move forward with CHG, but also about my chances anywhere else. However, I was asked to interview with the hiring manager, which consisted of "getting to know you" as well as some general technical discussion. There was a topic that we meandered to, that he explicitly recognized as not part of the job description, nor something he'd be considering in my overall interview performance. Nevertheless, I still felt that part of the conversation went well, along with the rest of the interview. But when the recruiter called me the following Monday to tell me that I would not be moving forward, he told me it was due to that very topic, again, recognizing that the topic was not part of the job description nor something I was told I would be judged on. On top of that, he also decided to tell me that the verdict was made immediately after the interview — no conversation had. While I feel there seemed to be a lot of BS around why I was rejected, my biggest issue with this whole experience was the recruiter. While it's not his job to make me feel better, and maybe he thought he was doing things in the spirit of full transparency, he could have held back on some details that weren't necessarily constructive. Telling a candidate that he'd be unlikely to move forward with the interview process despite the recruiter's recommendation (which begs the question as to why the recruiter is even there in the first place), that there are a lot of things working against him with his job search in general, and making it very clear that not a lot of thought was given before rejecting the candidate are things you'd think a normal human would have the common sense not to harp on. I've talked to a lot of recruiters, but this is the first one I've felt the need to review.