Oh my god, where do I even start? I received a ‘text’ message on my phone from the so called CEO of the company. They thanked me to have applied for the position and wanted me to confirm my email address. The next day I receive an email that says the CEO of the company would like to interview me for my application. Now, if you are a CEO, you wouldn’t have time to interview a candidate to begin with, because you have HR people to do the job for you, and you should be the last person to meet the candidate. Clearly, you can just call yourself the owner of the company, and I won’t have any problems with that. The interview was a phone interview, and this so called CEO of the company started with asking my age. I said it is not appropriate to ask a candidate’s age and I’m quite young, and told them my age. During the interview this person talked over me, added their so valuable mansplaining opinion over everything I said, which was just a repeat of what I exactly stated, and told me that I think I am quite young but I am almost 30, and they interview people straight out of college. Well, I am 30, and I have 12 years of work experience on top of a BA and MA degree. If they want to hire someone straight out of college with a couple years of experience, be my guest and don’t call me for an interview in the first place. They asked me if I have children, which is so inappropriate unless you are providing child care. When I said this is not a question that they are allowed to ask, they said ‘Oh you haven’t worked in the UK long enough, have you?’ and this clownery stole an hour of my life on the phone. I was invited for a face to face interview, and for the first time in my life I withdrew a job application at that point. The company doesn’t provide any learning and development opportunities, and they expect you to be in the Central London office 5 days a week. They think that they have made the most mistakes during lockdown, when everyone was working from home. This clearly shows the incompetence of the managing style, because the professional companies work 100% remotely, and provide the best perks for their employees and still grow. If you don’t want to get played by Players Publishing, stay away from them at all cost.

I applied via Indeed, received a call within a few days and was then invited to interview - I went in for the face-to-face interview. It lasted for about an hour.