TL;DR: Incredibly messy interview process with poor communication from recruiter. You'll meet with the same set of people, multiple times, that will ask you the same questions- just packaged differently. Read company Glassdoor reviews to get more insight into how employees view the company.
Interview process steps:
1. Initial interview with recruiter - Talked about my background, role, and company. After some probing questions, recruiter mentioned this position has been hard to fill due to certain people on the team making it difficult to hire a candidate and the changing decisions from upper management on what they were looking for. Asked if he “scared me off yet”. I wanted to see for myself, so I scheduled panel interviews with the teams. I thought it was odd the screening interview was more negative about the people and politics than trying to sell me on the actual role.
2. Panel interviews - Met with IT team first- it was fine. I could tell questions weren’t super prepared and they definitely were not taking notes. We kept getting off tangent and the interview lasted for 2 hours. Second panel interview was with the CEO, Head of People, and Transformation Officer. Questions were pretty straight forward- strategy, experience, people management, etc.
3. In-person interviews- I was then asked to do an in person interview, which I thought would be my final. I showed up to HQ and was put in a conference room surrounded by the same group of people (6 total), that I met previously. Discussion was lighthearted, but I quickly realized that the questions they kept asking me were basically the same as my online panel interview questions, just asked differently. This was odd to me for two reasons. First, based on our interviews, shouldn’t they have my answers? Second, if they were trying to get clarity on those questions, they didn’t bother asking them. Either way, I got a tour of the office at the end and got to see the IT area. I’m not going to go into detail, but l was shocked how old school this IT team was doing things, based on the age of the company. This just shows their team lacks modern training and best practices to do their work. After my interview, I didn’t hear from the recruiter at all for two days, after which I had to reach out to him for an update.
4. Fill-in questions - Lastly the questionnaire. After the update, I was told by the recruiter the team is still figuring out which candidate they liked and needed clarity on a couple of questions. The team needed to draft them up and I would have the weekend to fill it out and return them. Surprise surprise, the questions I received were once again similar to the questions asked by the interview team the last two times I met with them. I still filled out all the questions and sent them to the recruiter. I called him shortly after asking him to give me a call back- no return, but an email that said they would review and get back to me by COB the next day. Next day came and nothing- no update. I made myself available so I could take the call, just in case there were any questions. The next day, still nothing, until I once again had to follow up with him to get an update. As a candidate I just let him know that I would appreciate simple communication from my recruiter and the company. The recruiter almost made me feel like I wasn’t being patient. While I had him on the phone, I asked him about the duplicate questions the team seemed to be asking me and he agreed with me and said that management doesn’t know what they want and it is a mess, but “he’s not going to stick a gun to my head and make me want this job”. I reiterated that I did, but that I just wanted to be communicated with.
In all my years interviewing people and being interviewed, I’ve never had to deal with a company that was so callous in their approach to hiring talent, and their unprofessional approach to interviewing and interacting with candidates. If you want to work for a company that’s truly going to care about how you grow personally and professionally, this is not the place.
