… or perhaps, rather more commonly, they did all those things, but were ignored or overruled, because their organisation hired UX specialists but it didn’t grant them any decisional pull.

Yes, nowadays every company goes through the moves, and it poses as if users were central to them. But few are able to actually putting their practice where their marketing babble is.

The majority of designers I speak to still lament that UX doesn’t have a seat at the big boys’ table in their company.

Quite possibly, that’s why the person you are interviewing left.

That all companies are perfectly sensible, honour user centered values, listen, include, and give space to designers, is a very big assumption indeed. One that doesn’t grant blaming all bad outcomes on the candidate sitting in front of you.