The management team seemed quite confused about what they wanted. I applied for two roles at FOREX.com (a company acquired by StoneX): Relationship Manager and Team Lead. I interviewed and progressed through three rounds. Since I preferred the Team Lead position, they asked me to complete a competitor research project and present it by the end of the week.
I completed the analysis, prepared the deck, sent it over, and then heard nothing back. After repeatedly following up, they finally replied a week later saying the presentation didn’t meet their expectations — even though they had asked me to present it, and the slides were meant to serve as bullet points only.
My impression is that the hiring manager wasn’t actually looking to bring in someone with more experience externally. Instead, they seemed to prefer hiring someone as a Relationship Manager and then promoting them later, rather than bringing in a Team Lead directly.