I was referred to the company by a business associate that said this company needed a lot of help. I applied for a training position and was called in for my first interview. I was interviewed by a person in charge of hiring more "Sales" staff and she was confused on why she was scheduled to interview me since I was applying for the training position. When she talked about the other staff members that she would have call me back for another interview she rolled her eyes when she mentioned the “boss”. She also explained that there was only one way to do things and that was “his” way, so that left me feeling a bit hesitant about getting a call and an interview with him. She also said she was not very tolerant herself, she said she was not a lienient manager and that her people had to perform and she didn't tolerate excuses. Nothing she said made me feel positive about the company. She was a bit odd and her attire was even odder for an office environment; she had on super short shorts (in the 60's I think they were known as hot pants) and a sports tank top. Another thing odd was that she said she was a “parent” company transplant from another state and that was because the company really didn't know where to put her so they moved her around a few places before placing her here. Anyway, it wasn't much of an interview. A couple of weeks went by and I received a phone call from a young man asking me to come in for an interview with him and a marketing person. I showed up a few minutes early, waited for 30-minutes, then when the marketing person finally greeted me she handed me an application and asked me to fill it out, it was 5 or 6-pages. Before I was finished she came and got me to come back for the interview, it was about 45-minutes after my scheduled time. They asked me a total of one question, and I don't even remember exactly what it was, something like, “how did we get your resume, you were a referral from so and so, right?” I got the feeling they had already found the person they were going to hire and they were just going ahead with the other interviews out of protocol. To fill in the silence I asked questions like what does your perfect training director look like? They replied, “enthusiasm” is number one. I asked a few questions hoping to give them clues on what they should be asking me. One of them finally said, “the reason we aren't asking you very many questions is because we either know that your great or that we're not interested in you at all”. Now that was a weird answer, so I asked, "So on a scale from 1 to 5 how do I rate in enthusiasm?", the guy said 3 and the marketing person said 4. I asked about their boss and they too rolled their eyes. I felt as if they had already made up their mind about me so I boldly asked them if I had a chance, they said, yeah we think so, but we'll let you know in a few days. That pretty much summed up my interview. Needless to say I felt like I was not going to be getting a call from them; so you can imagine how surprised I was when I did. It was about 10-days later when I received a phone call about giving a presentation the following week. They said there would be an audience. I prepared for the presentation and when I arrived (nearly a month from my first interview) there were the two that I had the last interview with and two young ladies that seemed very unhappy about being there. I felt like I walked into an unhappy group, the lights were very low, and the room was very small. I did make the mistake of focusing too much on valuable content that I felt the company could really use as opposed to being creative and fun. So, I don't know if I would have hired me if the other presenters were much more creative than I, but again, the whole atmosphere seemed odd. I did not get the feeling that this was a well run company with happy employees. And again, I think the two that were making the decision had a person in mind that they were going hire from the get-go and my interviews were just out of protocol so that they could say they went through the motions with all the applicants. It is a very small community and everybody needs a job! I don't lay any blame on the people themselves for anything, I just think it is not a professionally run company.
