Let me preface this by saying that, from what I've read on Glassdoor, my interview process was the exception rather than the rule. I have no reason to believe Red Ventures normally conducts interviews in this way. This said, this was arguably the single worst interview I have ever been a part of.
The reason I say this is not because the interviewer was hostile, asked difficult questions, or displayed any open dislike toward me. Rather, it's because she was obviously not paying attention, reading off a script, and there was constant, distracting chatter in the background. The first question was exceedingly basic but was turned into a disaster.
She asked me to walk her through my resume. Easy, right? I mentioned my campaign work and how I had to often interact with a varied array of people through multiple mediums to sell them on the candidate and generate interest. I then spoke briefly about my ability to handle people at my college job, where I frequently interact with customers, and was promoted to supervisor partially for my ability to do this effectively. Over these sentences, two instances of miscommunication occurred. One of them is acceptable, the other was entirely not.
When describing my work on the campaign, I said something to the effect of "I've done a lot of work which might apply to this job such as calling Democratic voters which is *like* cold calling." In her response, she pointed out this job doesn't involve cold calling and reminded me of that in great detail. Okay, this is a mistake on my part, which I can accept. I meant to say I did work which was similar to cold calling and this involves the ability to sell someone on an idea. However, I understand how my response might have been misconstrued and that, in an interview, it is only natural you pay for slip ups like this.
But after this, she went on to say that this was not a "customer service job" and then basically re-read the entire position description back to me. This is the part I really do not understand. At no point did I hint that I thought this was a customer service job. I mentioned my customer service experience strictly as it related to the need for interpersonal skills in both that job and the one I was interviewing for. I explained this not in a quick, sloppy way like my cold-calling slip-up; it was the entire substance of my answer of a couple sentences and I made it more than clear I was highlighting interpersonal skills. This was especially exasperating given that she had asked me to walk her through my resume, not, in any way, expound upon any aspect of the job I applied for. I explained these points, apologized, and was ready to move on.
Luckily, the second question asked me about something very specific to the job description. I answered this without issue and so this at least partially made up for the issues with the previous question.
However, after this, it was pretty much downhill. Throughout the entire process, the interviewer would pause, mess up the question, speak haltingly, and it became painfully obvious she was reading directly from a script and was thus (understandably) unable to carry on a smooth interview. Whatever, even that's not too bad since I was able to answer the questions fine. What did get annoying is that her follow-up to my responses was also clearly canned or else incredibly generic and distracted.
The first time I answered a question well and got some positive words, I was, naturally, happy. When every single one of my responses was followed up by basically the same response, I became less so. This is because it reinforced the perception the interviewer was distracted/not actually engaged in the process/reading off a script. This perception was only worsened by the constant sound of people talking in the background which made it both difficult to hear her and made me think it would be almost impossible if she weren't distracted.
I am sure my interviewer is a lovely person. Maybe it was even one of her first times interviewing someone. That said, I left this feeling like my answers weren't fully understood. I'm not saying I would have gotten the job even if my interviewer had been perfect. I'm saying that the interview was conducted in an unprofessional manner and that there were several instances, including one very obvious one, when a fairly simple response to a simple question was not absorbed.
My advice to any interviewees who find themselves in my position is to do a better job getting through to a person like my interviewer and have them go off script. I should have found a way to fit in some personal question at the end of a response to break the cycle of generic, uninterested questions and responses I was receiving. In this sense, the interview was a valuable learning experience for me. It made me prep for future ones in ways which were very helpful. I hope people can learn from my experience to avoid where I failed.