I applied online via a recruiting agency's posting. My recruiter submitted my resume and bio to the hiring department. Prior to my first interview, I was required to sign a NDA and complete a Pre-Interview Questionnaire. The Questionnaire consisted of a number of different question categories such as personal information, academic background and employment history - basically a standard job application.
I completed all of the required documents and sent them along to my recruiter. I then had my first round interview, which was a tad bit off-putting in the line of questioning. The interviewer talked in depth about the company, how they were rapidly growing and about the company culture. For the EA role specifically, he believed that the role doesn't require a bachelor's degree and the company or Founder I should say, is looking for an individual who takes initiative, can make executive decisions and can basically manage themselves. With that in mind, I was offended when he asked me why my GPA wasn't higher, since he just said that the role did not require a degree and I had 10 plus years of executive assistant experience and had been out of school for over a decade. For reference, my GPA was not a 3.5, but it also wasn't lower than a 3.0. Again, it was a weird question and not relative to the role.
I was really excited about the role and the opportunity for growth that I ignored the red flag in his line of questioning and decided to proceed with the second round of interviewing, if selected, which I was. All interviews require a 4-step/round process, or "interview journey" as they likes to call it. During the first round, you will meet with the hiring representative, in the second round you will complete the challenge exercise, in the third round, you will meet with the Founder’s Gatekeeper, and the fourth and final round is when you get to meet with the Principal/Founder.
The challenge exercise as another interviewee had mentioned is a timed exercise where you complete and submit a body of work, which I did, and was then advanced to the third round. Prior to the third round, I was then again required to complete another set of documents prematurely and without an offer. The company requires you to submit a vast amount of information on the front-end, they'll call your previous employers and current one, they will do an extensive background check, require you to complete a security prescreen - all while still in the very early stages of the interview process, which I think is a complete abuse of the candidate's time and invasive if no offer has been made. There's a lot of work being required of the candidate on the front-end.
After completing the challenge exercise, they mailed me a copy of their mission statement and I assume that was my study guide to prepare me for my third round interview. He mentioned that she likes to talk about the mission statement with candidates and get a feel for their thoughts on it, which she didn't even mention, it was more of a personal line of questioning/getting to know you as a person. I then advanced to the third round interview via Zoom. In the third round, it was apparent that there's a disconnect between what the job really is versus what was advertised on the posting. She talked about her history with the company, she talked about why previous Executive Assistants didn't work out, but she unlike the first representative of the company, seemed to be looking for someone with little to no experience. The role as it was explained to me and advertised was a hybrid role Executive Assistant/Office Manager/Receptionist - this is what drew me to it, because you'd have the opportunity to be a jack of all trades and wear multiple hats - build their administrative team or system. However, in speaking to the third round representative, she expressed that the role would be just starting out as Office Manager/Receptionist and she'd be afraid that I get bored if I don’t receive Executive Assistant responsibilities right off the back. Whereas the first representative is saying, in this role you'll be creating our policies and procedures and duties for the Executive Assistant/Office Manager/Receptionist - as they don't have any policies or procedures for that role, because it's a startup and they've never had someone in that role, being it was a new company and all. The third round interview was redundant in a sense, because I then had to go over my employment history with her as well. I asked her what drew her to working for the Company and she expressed that she was granted the opportunity by the Founder because they are in the same community, prior to Grier, she worked in property management. Although, it seems that they really grill interviewees on why they would want to leave their current industry for tech. All in all, it was not a positive experience and I would not recommend.
