My resume was presented by recruiter. Was told that - BEFORE THEY WOULD EVEN TALK TO ME - that I needed to complete a very comprehensive questionnaire that discussed my philosophical approach on a number of topics. They would then review my responses - and if they liked what I had written - they'd arrange a phone interview.
The questionnaire had 15 questions - many with four or more subsections. All were very deep questions that had no simple answers. Some were clearly redundant. I spent several days answering them - although I should have trusted my gut instinct that this was going to go nowhere - and abandoned my effort. Instead, I soldiered on as I decided in would be good exercise for me for other reasons.
While completing these questions, it struck me that the questions they asked were very odd. The thoughts behind their construction seemed disjointed - almost on the border of being naïve about how modern businesses are managed - and how modern products are created to serve markets. Whoever constructed the questionnaire didn't seem to have a very good understanding of the roles of marketers, sales folks or product managers, for example. Some of the terms they used - like "OEM" - didn't make sense in the context of the question they were asking - which complicated answering the question. This led me to the conclusion that the company was confused about their position in the food chain - and likely didn't even know what a food chain was. When placed in the context of questions they asked, linguistic definitions of terms and operational roles were mixed up with great regularity.
Other questions - which I decided I would answer only obtusely because their intent was so obvious - were asking for free consulting advice (what products should we make and what markets should we enter - and why? How big are the markets?). Others seemed to reflect a corporate culture that was very paternalistic, top-down "command and control." The questions they asked suggested the company - as a whole - was very insular and dated in their approaches to sales, customer support, market development and people management.
I could have viewed this exercise as a test of my written capabilities in dealing with ambiguous questions. I instead reached the conclusion that Dwyer Instruments really had no idea what marketing or sales is. It's probably a engineer-driven company at its heart - with all of the warts associated with such a limited view of the world. Looking at their website - and the hundreds of clearly overlapping products with no strategic focus - I confirmed my suspicions.
After going through all of this, the company decided not to go forward with a phone interview. Moreover, they didn't even have the common courtesy to send me at least a thank you for applying.
I later learned through the recruiter that they've pulled this questionnaire stunt on more than 30 people thus far. Who knows, they're probably using the responses they get from these questionnaires as a strange sort of marketing survey.
The position as noted above - since being advertised over two years ago - remains unfilled as of April 2014. They're looking for a purple elephant that doesn't exist. I suspect they're going to need to grow the person they want from a petrie dish and wait until they're old enough to walk and talk.
Based on their questionnaire, no such animal as walks the Earth today - and probably never has.