I spoke on the phone with someone very friendly from HR, then again on another call with someone in sales. The phone calls were neutral/positive experiences. Then I went into the office... The interview process was planned to take about 2.5 hours. About 1 hour of it was a group interview with 2 other candidates. 3 of us candidates were in a room with 5 sales leaders from EF Explore America. The questions were standard; they were looking for the one person among us to rise above the pack. Also, I will note that throughout the entire interview, when people found out I drove all the way from northern Vermont for this interview and would be returning back there after it, they were saying, "You shouldn't drive in this blizzard!" Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the fact that this was the day of one of the worst blizzards in Boston in years! "We'll make sure you leave right on time so you can get through Boston in this blizzard!" they kept saying. Next, the 3 of us candidates split up into different rooms, where the sales leaders rotated among us for mini-interviews, each at about 20 minutes long (I believe). The 3 groups of interviewees were very mixed. 1 group - the first group - was made up of 2 men that seemed pretty friendly and had some good questions. That experience was positive! The 2nd group was just 1 woman. I'm not exaggerating when I say she seemed like she would have rather been getting a colonoscopy than speaking with me. She was abrupt and condescending, with sassy responses to what I believed were good responses (similar responses to what I gave the first 2 men, who were responsive). I thought I was handling myself very well, but then I saw her write on her notebook (in very large letters) "DOESN'T CARE." I didn't try to look down at her paper, but with the way she wrote it neatly and in massive letters, I felt like she WANTED me to see it. It almost felt like a social experiment. This was a huge red flag to me. The 3rd group was fine. A woman who seemed bored and a man who asked most of the questions. I thought I did a great job with these 2 considering how annoyed I still was about my experience with the woman I met before. The 3 of us candidates then went back into the original room, where the original HR woman from our phone interviews said goodbye and gave us her business card, telling us we would hear our "yes" or "no" within the week. The HR woman left the room and came back immediately, telling me (not the others) that one of the men (the one from Group #3) wanted me to stick around to answer more questions. I took this as a positive sign! This was the same man that went on and on about me driving in the blizzard and even he wanted to hold me back. I figured it must be urgent, maybe even an offer on the spot! His one question for me was along the lines of "Why is a creative person like you interested in pursuing sales?" Honestly, I wasn't. But I used my theatre background to convince him how perfect I would be for sales, how creative sales can be, yada yada yada. 30 minutes later, I left, feeling like I really convinced him. And I trudged on in the snow. I won't talk about the car accident I experienced in the blizzard, which set me back thousands of dollars; EF doesn't control Mother Nature. (However, holding me back the extra half hour didn't exactly help...) But returning home that night 4 hours behind schedule after getting my car towed, I checked my email and got a "no." Fast forward 2 days, I was speaking with my contact at EF, telling her I didn't get the job. She told me, "That's not what they told me. They loved you. They want you to email them back or call them back begging for the job. That's how they do it. They want to see your passion." They want to see passion? Didn't holding me back an extra half hour and listening to my passion pitch count as just that? What psychotic person would take a job rejection and fight back at it? I know sales is all about negotiation, but when an emailed rejection letter gets sent your way, they really expect you to fight it? At my current job, I'll be interviewing candidates in the next few months; if they emailed me back after a rejection, I would deem them crazy. At this point, I could have called them but I didn't. Not only were there enough red flags during the interview to attract 1000 bulls, I personally think it's extremely demeaning of them to expect an entry-level employee to BEG for a job, especially since the benefits package is about average and the salary is well below average. This isn't Google or Netflix we're talking about here. This company has excellent products and I'm sure the employees are great at what they do, but I would recommend anyone that wants to keep their dignity to stay far away from an interview with EF (well, this department in particular). Looking back at this experience, I really believe I dodged a bullet by not calling them back to beg for the job.