Was really surprised at the experience I had during the interview, there are so many good ratings / reviews for this company that I was honestly thinking I must have been the problem during the whole process. Interview was with two people and ended up starting late because one of them had “gone off somewhere” and they had to go and find them.
Started off well but the interview was actually picking apart my CV and asking me why I had left this company to go that company etc; Reasonable enough to ask but I felt I was being challenged on every decision I had made in my career. Here’s some advice: Sometimes people leave companies because it just doesn’t work out, pressing them for further detail or trying to make them feel as if they have made a wrong Career decision is just unnecessary and going to ruin the candidate’s confidence in the interview. At the end of the interview we had discussed practically nothing about the role and I had no idea whatsoever about what I would be doing were I successful, it was blatantly obvious the two people interviewing me were not technical whatsoever which is incredibly annoying when attending interviews for IT positions.
The atmosphere was really uncomfortable and awkward during this interview. Yes you can argue they were just trying to “put you on the spot to see how you react” but this was completely unnecessary for a job like this (Technical Support Analyst), I’ve attended dozens of IT interviews in my career and NONE of them have gone like this, there is simply no need for it. Yes working in IT is stressful at times but not on the stress level of what they were trying to make me feel in this interview, and based on what I saw when I walked through the office everyone seemed to be sitting down having fun, relaxing and taking selfies… seemed very stressful indeed.
Interview just felt rushed toward the end (or maybe the panel had just lost interest), giving very quick summarised answers to the questions I asked and turns out the HR interviewer was from one of the offices in England and had a train to catch hence cutting the interview short! Great way of making the candidate feel like making them come in today that their time was valued seeing as one of the panel had a train to catch. Very intimidating when the panel intentionally gives short answers and keeps looking at their watch making you feel like you have already lost the chance at getting the job.
In the end feedback was they didn’t like how I had “failed my GCSEs and didn’t re-take them in as I knew I would fail them again” and “went off-topic a lot”, in short they just didn’t take to me at all.
For the GCSEs – Fair enough I failed them, not every 16 year old in the country is going to do well in school and some are smart and others not. However I actually stated that I didn’t re-sit my GCSEs because I knew I would indeed fail them because I wasn’t ready (they left out the part where I mentioned I was 16 years old at the time) and the fact that resitting a GCSE at this point in time is at least £1000+ which I would rather spend supporting my family or investing in a private IT certification. If this company hires external people based off their school results then I’m worried as to how they are still going, I know plenty of people who did awful in school but have made something of themselves. I find it ridiculous a company tried to “put me down” by making me feel bad by not wanting to re-sit my GCSEs and for thinking I couldn’t pass them (at 16 years old…).
Off-topic – I don’t recall going off-topic much but only in response to questions they asked me. They asked me “I heard that things were pretty bad in your last company in terms of how things were run, is that true?” so obviously I am going to talk about what things were like, what was right and what was wrong but obviously I’m going to talk about various things as this is a pretty open-ended question, so it would be very difficult to try and not venture off into other aspects as it is a very open-ended question that any candidate would answer differently.
In summary: I walked out feeling awful and wondering what I did wrong. My time was absolutely wasted and I was unnecessarily put on the spot with silly “tough” questions such “So why do you want to work for MeetingZone?” followed by “Yeah… but why MeetingZone?” These silly questions sound stupid to hell and I just re-worded my answer for this and the interviewing person just went “hmm, okay.” completely bonkers.
I’m glad I wasn’t offered this job as I really feel I would have accepted it due to the reasonable salary and company image, just goes to show that high ratings and salary are not everything.
Thanks for not offering me the job, that would have been the biggest mistake on my CV compared to what you thought was on there already.
