After your application (consisting of a resume, cover letter and/or writing sample and transcript) is reviewed and moved to the next round, you get invited to complete an writing test. Writing Test: You're required to parse through a selected data set and prepare a written brief including any graphs or tables as appropriate. You have one week to complete it, but it only takes a couple of hours. In my opinion, the test was a good measure of one's ability to analyze data and communicate findings. Phone Interview: Once you move to the next round, you get invited to a 30 minute phone interview. For this position, I spoke with the someone from the recruiting team. After briefly going into what Acumen is and detailing the role and responsibilities, she asked me about my resume and other behavioral questions. Afterwhich you get the opportunity to discuss or ask what you want to. While the questions were pretty standard, the phone interview went very well because the recruiter was very easy to talk to. I genuinely felt like it was more of conversation than a one-way question and answer format. Because of how well I thought the interview went, I was sure that I was going to move to the next round. (I did not and my recruiting process with Acumen ended there). Issues: The primary issue with Acumen's recruiting is how much time they take. I get the impression that the recruiting team is severely understaffed, especially since they've been having a hiring surge for other roles. I would like to believe that the existing team is trying their level best as all the interactions I've had with them have been nothing short of great. After submitting my application I first received an incorrect (perhaps older) writing test, that I already started work on as soon as I received it. Upon receiving the correct version I completed and submitted the test only to not hear from Acumen for 20 more days and only got a response after I followed up on my application status. After that I received a phone interview. When I finished my phone interview, I waited for 3 more weeks before following up again. I received an apology and a notice that my application was still under review, within a week I was notified that I did not move to the next round. I asked for feedback and received a generic response along the lines of there are multiple factors that go into our decision. Suggestions for recruiting team: Please outline an approximate timeline at the beginning of the process so applicants know what to anticipate and more importantly when. While the entire interaction between recruiters through emails and even during the interview had been amazing, the overall anxiety between stages left me feeling slightly disappointed with the process.

The timeline consisted of an initial exercise looking at Medicaid data and developing a policy proposal. Next there was a 30 minute screening interview and then a 1 hour exam plus a final interview with multiple members of different projects. The communication was awful from the company. I kept asking for some kind of timeline for when they would get back to me. "We will be in touch soon," was always the response. I didn't end up hearing back until well after a month from the final interview. It was very unprofessional. I also had to keep following up after the screening just to get HR to schedule the final interview. This company seems to lack coherent leadership and is not at all invested in the hiring process.