Adecco reached out to me from a LinkedIn posting they had which I found out was really for Kaplan Test Prep (although they did not disclose their clients' name until our second or third conversation.) At first, their initial recruiter asked me a bunch of basic questions and sounded enthusiastic. He said there would be an email with a bunch of links including "on-boarding paperwork" to complete before moving forward. When I asked what he meant by "on-boarding" since I had not been interviewed or hired yet, he replied that was Adecco's standard procedure- that they were in fact taking me on as a candidate- and that it was required before they were willing to evaluate a candidate for any position they were staffing. Since the Kaplan gig would serve my purposes for the time being and fell well within my skills and experience, I decided to suck it up and cooperate with their elaborate hiring process, which became more and more involved as it went along. Mind you, this was for a CALL CENTER SALES POSITION- not rocket science, nothing specialized, nothing requiring more than a high-school level intelligence and skillset. Also, the Kaplan salary was only $22k, with the commission potential of their top performers (!) topping out at $32k. For life.
First was the email which required that I apply for the job all over again by repeating all of the information which had already been clearly submitted via LinkedIn with my profile and resume. This included having to parse and re-type my resume into their specified formatting, which took over an hour to complete. Along with this (the "on-boarding paperwork") came a whole battery of tests and assessments which took MORE THAN 4 HOURS to complete as they were each around an hour long (2 were timed). There was a psychological evaluation, a mathematical and analytical skills test, a verbal skills test, and one other miscellaneous test- none of which had any relevant connection to the position as far as I could see.
**The recruiter assured me that all of this would be kept on file and used to continue finding me other positions which might also be a fit. That NEVER happened.
After acing their tests (I have an IQ of over 160, after all) I was called in for a front facing interview with a different, more senior recruiter. It was pretty basic. After a few minutes, she set me up in a different room for a Skype interview with someone from Kaplan. This is something she had not told me about in advance. Their computer equipment was slow and Skype had not been downloaded properly, so there was a long delay before we could get the video chat up and running. This was with some guy in New York, which went pretty well. Nothing about the conversation stood out either negatively or otherwise.
A couple of days later I got a call from Adecco requesting a phone interview with another person from Kaplan Test Prep. That interview was interesting, as the person was asking me questions about where I saw myself in a few years. Since I could see that Kaplan is basically a flat organizational structure, at least in the division I was applying for, I asked what opportunities could be available with the company down the road after working as a sales rep.
After this interview, I never heard anything again. Not from Kaplan. Not from Adecco. Not even though Adecco had made their promise about the time-consuming hoops they made me jump through, saying there would be other opportunities through them as well. I did not get so much as a phone call, a return call, or a courtesy email letting me know I didn't get selected for the position. In the end, I knew I was probably overqualified, but made sure to let them know I was happy to do the job required and see what it could lead to. But after three weeks and a total of around 7 HOURS invested in answering questions and taking tests designed for WAY more elevated positions, it seems Adecco is just playing a game to see how much fun they can have getting people to waste their time.