2022 Interviews…
By September 2022, I had begun distributing my resume to potential employers. It was somewhat of an odd experience - partially because I had not truly done an interview since 2018 and partially because everything is now performed online. I had sent out resumes in February 2020, as I was finishing my data science certificate program at Northwestern, but everything was shutting down due to COVID by the next month and all hiring just stopped. I think I had applied for 20 positions at that time. This time I applied for only 8 positions but each one was something that I thought would be a very good fit and happily had 4 positive responses.
My initial interviews were very similar to my past interviews. Most of them were with human resources personnel over the phone and was just a general discussion about my interests and background. I find these discussions to be very beneficial since I have a chance to ask about the ambiguous aspects of the job posting; although, many times I am told that only the hiring manager can provide details. In general, I was able to get a sense of what the job is like.
Of the four initial phone interviews, I went on to do two second round interviews and I rejected one offer for a second interview and I was not selected for another second round interview. Luckily, my two favorite options were interested in me. The interview that I turned down was due to concerns that the job would have a very limited use of modern tools and that the actual job did not match the job posting. The second interview and third interviews were with the hiring manager and then with multiple coworkers. After all the interviews, it took around 6 weeks to get a response since I was the first candidate interviewed for both positions. Both companies made offers at about the same time.
What differed from my past experiences was that neither company offered for me to visit the office and talk to the team about what they do and how they do it. This was discussed during the second and third interviews but in a very time constrained manner. I asked additional questions about what to expect after I was told I would get an offer and I did get reasonable answers but much of it was deferred to later because I was told that I would receive two to six months of training before being completely onboarded. Everyone seemed very likeable and positive about their roles and the hybrid work schedule was said to be working well. I have had concerns about onboarding with most people working from home - it seems like this would cause problems in many cases.
The process of receiving an offer was very brief compared to past experiences and was completely negotiated by the recruiter and not the hiring manager. Shortly after my followup questions, I received a verbal offer from the recruiter and was immediatly asked to discuss salary. This was actually an unplanned phone call and the recruiter was a bit abrupt when outlining the salary and benefits. I asked for a small bump in salary because I knew the basics of the other offer I would be getting but I had not received anything in writing yet. The recruiter contacted me the next day with a final offer and gave me roughly five days to make a decision. I thought this was a bit fast considering I had waited six weeks for their interview process to finish. After a couple days, I accepted the offer and received a confirmation from the recruiter but that was actually the last I ever heard from that person. This was a bit odd because they entered a start date that I had not agreed upon and all documentation from that point forward was from an automated system. In total, I think the entire process occurred during one work week - from followup questions to offer to acceptance.
So in summary, the process was much less personal than my past experiences. Everything was done online and often details were omitted. Upon follow messages, some clarity was provided but it required asking very detailed questions to get the necessary information. The one change I would make now is to push for more clarity regarding their onboarding process. In the end, I really liked the company as a whole but the onboarding process and the long-term details for my particular role were not explained well. Within my first few weeks, I realized what seemed like very manageable tasks I had done routinely in the past were part of a time consuming, poorly designed workflow and the training was not very good either.
For the first and only time in my career, I was not able to speed through onboarding and didn’t really see how I would thrive in this environment - it seemed like I would spend all my time asking questions about what I would consider standard operating procedures and the responses often resulted in vague and misleading answers. After multiple discussions with my coworkers and verifying that everything was going according to plan with my manager, I began to weigh the benefits of continuing at that role. I realized that even after I learned the core information for the position, I would still be working within a frustrating workflow. So after only six weeks on the job, I resigned. I’m probably lucky that the initial training did not go well - by the fourth week, I was designing my own work breakdown structure (WBS) which helped me understand what I should expect after several months on the job and it was a bit disheartening.
Check out my next article which will be about what I learned about myself from this experience.
