The below account of my interview process is quite lengthy, but for anyone interviewing for this position, or a sales role in general, i would highly encourage you to take the time to read the background that I have provided and the ultimate result.
I was approached by a recruiter via LinkedIn looking for account managers- Gartner recruiters are all over salespeople right now trying to get them to relocate to Fort Myers in South Florida. The original recruiter did not fully understand my background and quickly realized that my experience (and along with it salary requirements) were far out of range for the position he was hunting for. He did however refer me over to another contact that was hiring for Business Development Managers- a position that better matched my qualifications.
The interview process was fairly straightforward. In the beginning, the recruiter I worked with was very helpful, encouraging and was an excellent coach on navigating the process and the different players that I would be speaking with. He was my initial phone screen and then I had an interview with a talent assessment lead and then a market leader in the final interview. To that point everything was courteous and professional. The recruiter worked hard to push the offer through and get a higher base salary and OTE signed off on. Once he gave me the verbal offer however the entire dynamic changed.
Any final/clarifying questions I had about the offer and position he attempted to dodge around and answered in a very passive aggressive manner. Earlier in the interview process he told me that once I was presented with a written offer they would fly me down to Fort Myers to meet with the team and get a feel for the area. When I brought this up to him, he quickly told me that it would be an unnecessary step and I needed to just accept remotely. At about this time, I had read through some of the reviews on Glassdoor of previous and current employees which described nightmare experiences. I would highly encourage anyone going through the interview process for a sales position to dedicate time to reading through these. This along with the recruiters aggressive approach to shutting down questions was an immediate red flag for me.
Once I received the actual written offer, personal matters arose (the details of which I will not go into on a Glassdoor review) which dominated my full attention. The day that my offer expired was the first day I was able to return to normal routine and focus any attention on it. At this point I had decided to reject the offer. My recruiter followed up with me to engage on why I had not signed, as I expected him to do, via phone and email late in the day. I was not able to respond, but went ahead and logged into the Gartner portal and declined the offer, providing a brief explanation where I relayed my appreciation of both the time and opportunity that had been presented to me, and stated that for personal and professional reasons a change for me was not the right thing at this time.
Because my recruiter had been very dedicated to this process, I wanted to provide him with more than just an email saying no thanks, and by the time I was able to place a call to him it was after hours. I planned to give him a call the next morning to let him know that I was appreciative of his commitment to the process and hard work and give a deeper explanation of why I had decided to decline the offer. However, I received an email from him shortly after declining the offer with the subject line "Wow". It read word for word, "That was a stunning display of unprofessionalism and cowardice." I am far from either of those things.
This served as confirmation that I had made the right decision. Recruiters are the face of the company to potential employees, and if that is how they treat prospects than I can only imagine what the sales leaders are like once you are employed there. Needless to say, the email that I received was the true display of unprofessionalism. I've been in sales for a number of years, and too often you do everything you can do for a prospect and they still don't buy from you. I have never once followed up with them via email to tell them that their decision was unprofessional and cowardice. It goes without saying that to do so would be unprofessional and cowardly.