I first spoke to a recruiter after applying, she told me about the job and how the company is structured. She mentioned that, during coronavirus, employees had their pay decreased by I think 10% to help offset costs, but that normal salaries had just been ready reinstated when I applied. That made me wary, but I still scheduled an interview.
First interview was virtual over google with the department manager. You know how some interviews feel like a conversation, both side contribute and you feel like you’re just talking? This interview did not feel that way. My interviewer had prepared an extensive list of “tell me about a time when” questions to ask me, all the standard questions you can google (how do you deal with coworkers, managers, deadlines, mistakes, etc). The interview was 30 minutes of her asking questions and me answering them—I didn’t get much feedback on the answers, so we didn’t really converse back and forth. Its the way companies conduct interviews when they want to hold all the cards, it feels very “us-against-them”.
After the first 30 minutes, the manager brought on 3 other people to the virtual meeting, some of whom were employees in the department and some who were managers of other departments. None of these other people had cameras on, so it felt like even more of a power imbalance with mine on and me talking to black screens. These new people all asked 1-2 rounds of more “tell me about a time when” questions, some of which were similar to what the manager had already asked me in our one-on-one (manager asked me 3 words my friends would use to describe me, one of her employees asked for 3 words my coworkers would use to describe me. I felt like those questions were way too similar, like the people asking them didn’t collaborate with each other before picking questions. It was hard not to regurgitate the same answer). All in all, first interview was exactly 60 minutes of what felt like interrogation-style questioning.
Second interview was between the manager and me, she just wanted to ask a few more refined questions to address concerns she had. This interview was virtual, about 25 minutes, and really could’ve been done over email.
Third interview was virtual with the manager and her boss. It was interesting because I felt like her boss wasn’t accepting my answers, he wasn’t satisfied with my responses so he would rephrased his question to ask me again. I wondered later if that was a trick to see if my answers changed, not sure though. This lasted about 45 minutes.
It’s been a month since my last interview and I haven’t heard back, but it’s clear that im not getting an offer. That’s okay because the more I spoke with them, the more uneasy I felt about the job.