Spotted an advert on a University careers site and applied. I had a background in languages, but didn't want to work as a translator, and it looked like an excellent opportunity. Got a fairly swift response from HR (I had the same contact throughout the process, who was very good) who asked me to complete two exercises one evening. We arranged an evening to do it. The exercises were very easy - both consisted of proof-reading and checking translations, one set of accounts, one essay, full of glaring grammatical / formatting errors. I received an email the next day congratulating me, and looking to arrange a time for a face to face interview. This email also contained salary details - the first time I'd seen them - which were disappointingly low. We then entered a long process of trying to arrange an interview date; we agreed dates twice, both times being moved by them, before settling on a date and time - apparently one of the US managers was in, and the HR contact wanted me to meet him. Given that I had made it clear that I would be travelling a long way for the interview, this was extremely irritating. When I arrived, the receptionist seemed surprised. I was in a suit - the rest of the office (which was packed but oppressively quiet) were in jeans and hoodies. My HR contact, who said he'd be there to welcome me, was away, and no-one knew where. Someone else, whose English was poor, showed me in to a meeting room at the allocated time and told me to wait. I waited for fifty minutes, and was very close to leaving. Eventually the US manager arrived, with no apology for being late. The interview itself was fine - a talk through my CV, experience, and what commercial and management qualities I had, all fairly standard - I was working in a similar job at the time. He talked me through the company's growth, organisation, and areas of focus, and we discussed issues about localisation, translation and where I might fit in. At times it felt more like my first day at the job, not an interview, which varied between feeling disconcerting and pleasant. The manager and I got on well, although he was fairly brusque at times, and extremely fond of bragging about the firm's success. A couple of things made alarm bells ring though: I'd read up on the company and put a number of common complaints to him, and he steadfastly refused to accept that there might be anything that the company could improve which, in my experience, is rare. He told me that nearly half of the time was spent of paperwork, and that they have trouble keeping well-qualified candidates like me, because, in his words, 'they have a problem with entitlement and can't take the pace'. He sold the role and the industry well, but made the company sound terrible - and it didn't seem like he even cared. We left on good terms after around 40 minutes. It all felt fairly unprofessional, but encouraging from my point of view; I got a call later that day from my usual HR contact offering me a higher role than that which I interviewed for.