I had spoken to the recruiter twice, very professional and respectful, a great experience. Unfortunately the secondary interview turned out to be one of the most demeaning and unprofessional experiences of my life.
I have had several secondary interviews lately and as soon as the interview started, I could tell that something was off and it was lacking the professionalism that I had experienced previously. Instead of the usual polite chatter that leads into discussing your resume, situational & behavioural questions, etc., the interviewer spent our time poking holes in my resume and talking down to me as if I were a 22 year old recent grad, when in reality I have a university degree with professional certifications and years of experience in tech. And the interviewer would have been aware of this, as he was looking at my LinkedIn profile the day before the interview. I was not treated with dignity or respect during this interview, it became very apparent that this interviewer wouldn't speak to a man with the same resume/experience in such a demeaning manner, and it only got worse as the interview went on. He was literally leaning back in his chair, trying to come up with questions to disprove my resume and abilities. As an example, I was discussing how I had put together sales action plans in the past by building custom reports using pertinent data to those particular account concerns, and the interviewer literally sat there with a smirk on his face and rolled his eyes when I was discussing deciphering data.
After the question portion, my interviewer stated he would be the one to decide if I met the product manager, and he didn't feel that I was "up for it", also stated that this type of role (and business development roles) required someone to be "pro-active" and he didn't think I could do that. Meanwhile, my entire resume tells a very different story :) The interviewer then went on to say that he had participated in this interview as a favour, that there were some great people at Insight ( I was referred by a longtime employee) but Insight didn't know what was needed, he was the person to handle these types of decisions. I should add that this employee was only at Insight for a very short duration of time and was part of a recent acquisition, so I am not really sure of why he was interviewing by himself.
My husband was also witness to this as well, as he returned home from walking the dog halfway through the interview, and was listening by the wall, as he was flabbergasted that a man was talking down to a woman with such disrespect in a professional setting, especially in this day & age.
My referral was made aware of what happened, but I never heard back from Insight, not even an apology, and it's been well over 6 weeks.