The interview process is long and repetitive. My experience was over the course of two weeks (15 days). I was presented with 6 steps and completed 4:
1. Recruiter call - 30ish min
2. Hiring manager question session (for you to ask about them) - 1 hour
3. Hiring manager standard interview (resume run-through) - 1 hour
4. Mid-Market VP interview (another resume run-through) - 1 hour - [this is where my experience ended]
5. CRO interview
6. A "challenge" - mock discovery call w/ a presentation
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Step 1 - Recruiter call: Standard recruiter questions (shared general company info; asked about my background and job search seriousness; asked about my desired pay range)
Step 2 - Hiring manager interview 1 (question session): For you to ask about the company/sales team and I’m guessing for them to gauge your “interest” in the company/role.
Step 3 - Hiring manager interview 2: This step and Step 2 should be combined. This was a standard interview. Walked through my various sales roles; why I left; questions about deal sizes and various metrics; what I’m looking for in a role, etc. etc.
Step 4 - MM VP interview: A more extensive version of Step 3 (a lot of the same questions). He opened up my LinkedIn page and went all the way back to my first listed role (my college tech support job) from more than 11 years ago. That role doesn’t even make the cut-off on my resume anymore, but… okay.
I understand wanting to get a complete picture of someone's applicable experience, but most of those earlier roles are only still listed to show there are no large gaps in my work history.
It's your interview process, so do what you will, but... we spent the same amount of time on a 5-month internship from 2012 as we did on my current role - the one that aligns with the job I am interviewing for.
Additionally, when I mentioned experiencing 3 layoffs during my post collegiate time in the workforce, he seemed dubious - as if I wasn’t being honest with him.
At the end of the call, he asked me if I had any questions (I had a few, but after 4 interviews, not sure what else I could ask) and then said he would connect with a couple individuals and they would reach out to schedule a meeting with the CRO.
Two days later, I received an email saying they were going to “move forward with other candidates whose experience more closely align with our needs.”
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The communication with the recruiting team was good for the most part, and movement from step to step was swift (usually 24 hours after the last step, I was contacted to schedule the next interview)… but the experience as a whole was annoying.
In addition to the length and repetitiveness:
- 5 minutes before Step 3, the recruiter reached out to say the hiring manager had a conflict and needed to reschedule… and then 10min after that, she reached back out to say, “Never mind, he can join.”
- 15 minutes before Step 4, I was contacted by the recruiter to say the VP would be 10min late, and if he didn’t show after that 10min to ping her to reschedule (he showed up, albeit 10ish minutes late).
- No feedback was provided at the end of this process.
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I don’t know. Maybe I dodged a bullet. In addition to the above, any time I asked about shortcomings or weaknesses or old reviews that said work/life balance was terrible, they gave me the equivalent of “my weaknesses are: I work too hard; I care too much; and I'm just too darn loyal, etc.”
They blamed the entirety of the previous sales issues/burnout on an old CRO (one guy created the entire toxic atmosphere apparently) and said their weakness was that prospects might not understand that they’re more than just your standard T&E tool - a real non-answer.