I made it through initial phone interview with a recruiter where she prepped me on 2 accounts to research for discussing in my next interview. As this is an internship, she (and also my employee referral) both stressed the importance of showing interest in learning. In my second interview I came fully prepared to discuss the two companies she’d mentioned, only for the interviewers to sound confused and sarcastic, like “uhhh those are two of many clients we have…?” They also seemed very unimpressed that I wanted to learn. Again, this is an internship idk why I’d have all the answers. Of course I bring my own skill set, but still it felt a bit off-putting if not giving off some subtle misogyny in their tone, idk. They just talked about how they’re both cogs in the corporate machine, like my willingness to learn was naive or something. It wasn’t even that challenging of an interview per se, they didn’t ask me anything meaningful about my creative process or how I manage people. It honestly felt like this was just a quota interview and they knew they weren’t interested. Not sure. I remember ending the teams call and just saying to myself… what was that…?
Needless to say I didn’t get it. I messaged the recruiter on LinkedIn to ask if I could better understand what went wrong and how I could improve, and she read my message but didn’t respond. I know many talented people apply here but I just felt if I’m prepped to discuss the wrong thing, idk how to succeed here. Just icky and unnecessarily limiting. Oh well!