I was contacted by a recruiter about the role at Transport for London. It sounded like a good opportunity, and my skills were a good match for the position, so I agreed to be submitted. A week later I was asked to attend an interview at the St James's Park head office.
The staff at the front desk were quite disorganised, and I was left waiting for 5 minutes before they managed to contact the hiring manager (they even asked me to confirm whether I was at the correct building!) and then another 5 minutes to be collected from the ground floor.
The interview itself was conducted in a shabby, run down looking office, and was with two staff. A man who introducted himself and said he was the hiring manager, and a woman who only introduced herself by her first name and said nothing else for the rest of the interview.
The main line of questioning was heavily qualifications and documentation based, ignoring all my previous IT experience and they types of projects I'd been involved in, and what I did. The biggest concern was whether I'd put together a RACI document and what methodology I used.
I get the impression that, being a government organisation, the interview was a box ticking exercise. That is, they had a set of criteria for the applicant to meet, and if whoever managed to tick all the boxes was hired. They had no desire to utilise skills or experience outside their criteria, and I felt the man interviewing me wanted to demonstrate how much he knew about "project management" (but avoiding anything IT related as I suspect he knew very little on the subject).
I was very suprised at this, as if they were looking for specific qualifications to be held as a pre-requiste, then they shouldn't have wasted by time by calling me for an interview. THe recruiter was unable to explain why this happened.