TLDR: I spent 21 hours on a job application only to get ghosted AFTER being headhunted for my expertise.
I was headhunted for my expertise for a role by an experienced recruiter, and asked to meet with the head of technology, in preparation for that meeting I spent roughly 10 hours collecting relevant work and organizing it to meet with him. After meeting with the CTO, he said the process would take 3 more rounds of interviews, including homework. So I spent another 8 hours completing the homework assignment, made it to round two, where I was grilled by someone who was far my junior for over an hour, and a PM who turned off her camera and went ghost mode during my interview which was incredible unprofessional imho. At the end of the second interview they said nothing, no, thank you for your work, or effort, or nice to meet you, just signed off. Now the recruiter who came to me is ghosting me. I've put in 20.5 hours into this job application to be treated like crap, with no respect and no follow up. It's so disheartening to be head-hunted to be put down and to waste 20 hours of my life on a dead end. It should be illegal to do more than two interviews and ask for homework. You'll find out if the person can't do their job within hours of starting, don't waste people's free time and diminish them.