Had three interviews at RM for the role of Senior Business Analyst
First interview was a screening interview, with a Human Resources type person. Focus was very much on going through my CV and comparing with the job spec, talking about my past experience, picking out items from the job spec and asking about my specific experience with those things. So far so good - on paper I was a good fit for the role, so this wasn't a problem. As well as this, there were some specific additional questions that might give some insight into RM's current corporate situation - especially in the light of some of the other comments on this site. They were asking me to give examples of where I had gone "above and beyond" , in terms of working extra hours at previous jobs, going the extra mile to get the job done right, that kind of thing.
Second interview was with the hiring manager and an existing RM product owner/business analyst. This second interview seemed to go pretty well too - we chatted mostly about RM's strategy going forward with their products, I was able to give some commentary that showed I had insight into their corporate situation, shared some anecdotes from my professional experience, talked about the placement of the role in the corporate structure, etc. Was generally a positive interview, and I thought it went OK.
Was told from the outset that there might be either two or three interviews as part of the interview process. As it turned out I was invited back for a third interview, which I was told was definitely the final interview for the role. This is where things seemingly went less well, since I didn't get offered the role.
It was mentioned in passing by Human Resources that there would be a 'task' in the final interview, but no indication of what the task would involve, or what I might need to do to prepare for it. The attendees in the third interview were the same people as for the second interview.
I think I was the first candidate to be interviewed in the third round, because there were some security policy issues in Teams that stopped them showing some of the task data to me from their computers.I was dialled in from outside the company, and they hadn't seen that issue before, which wasted some valuable interview time. I was also concerned that similar security concerns might prevent me from sharing electronic documents with them, since it seemed nobody had tested it, and that more interview time would be wasted trying to get it all to work, which might leave a bad impression.
Anyway, the interviewers presented me with a problem statement relating to the business, and wanted me to perform business analysis on it, to show off my skills. Specifically, they wanted the "pain points" listed regarding the business problem they had outlined, the stakeholders identified, they wanted the BA deliverables listed, any assumptions that I had made as part of my analysis listed, and they also wanted me to create a backlog of "3 or 4 relevant user stories" too . And then they wanted me to present that information back to them, in "whatever way I wanted" - they suggested Powerpoint slides, although they said they were "open" to however I did it. And here's the real kicker - they gave me a grand total of 15 minutes to do all of that in!
This presented me with an immediate issue, because I didn't have Powerpoint on the PC I was dialled into Teams from, so I had to make a choice straight away about how I was going to handle that. And 15 minutes is, in my view, far too short a time to deliver all of that to any kind of reasonable quality standard. So I made a judgment call to spend the bulk of my time on the analysis, rather than on the presentation. I used most of my time jotting down notes about my analysis and my solution, and then presented my analysis back verbally to them, reading from my notes.
Had the call from Human Resources today, saying I didn't get the role. Their feedback was that my analysis was good, but that the presentation was lacking, and that this was important for the role, because of the remote workers in India I would be working with. Obviously, I wouldn't be issuing verbal instructions to coworkers in India as part of the role, but given that I hadn't been warned that I was going to need to make a Powerpoint presentation as part of the interview, I didn't feel this was necessary a fair test of my skills. It would have cost them nothing to explain in advance that I was going to need to make a presentation, and that I would need to have the requisite tools handy.
It also felt that like there was a little bit of a "quantity over quality" vibe around the interview, and therefore potentially the role too, and that filling up a backlog full of fairly sparse user stories in double quick time, and making presentations just to show you were doing something, was maybe something that was expected by the company and considered virtuous? Rather than actually thinking about what you were writing first? Hard to say, but if that 15 minutes was indicative of how much output they were expecting from their BAs on a regular basis, then maybe it's just as well I didn't get offered the role at RM. This may reflect the current financial situation at RM, if other commentators here are correct, and they need their staff to go "above and beyond" just to cope in this difficult market.
