I applied online and roughly a month later I was contacted via email to schedule a phone interview. When the day of the phone interview came, I sat by my phone and waited for the recruiter to call. She never called. After that I reached out to the recruiter by both email and telephone to see what happened, and ended up rescheduling the interview.
Now, one would think a recruiter who missed the first interview would not miss the rescheduled interview, right? Wrong. This recruiter totally did not call me on the scheduled day, but instead called me two days later. Since I really needed the job I ended up doing the phone interview at the unscheduled time (which I should add was difficult because it was during a time I really couldn’t talk on the phone for an interview). The phone interview questions were pretty basic. They were things like: “Why do you want to work for NYU?”; “Tell me about your background.”; “What are your salary requirements?”; etc. After the phone interview, I was asked to come in and do an in person interview. I accepted and headed to NYU a week later for the interview.
Overall, I would say the interview went ok. A junior/mid level analyst interviewed me for the financial analyst position I applied to. It was a one-on-one interview that lasted roughly 20 minutes. I guess my biggest complaint about the interview was that the guy interviewing me didn’t seem to have a lot of experience conducting interviews. He seemed nervous while talking to me and also seemed like he didn’t know what types of questions to ask me. In fact, now that I think about it, a lot of the questions he asked seemed really random and totally unconnected to the position I was applying for. I’ve been on a lot of other financial analyst interviews recently, and usually I am asked questions like “How do you handle budget inconsistencies?” or “What types of financial controls have you worked with in the past?” This guy was asking things like “What class would you take if you could take any class?” and “Do you like to travel?” In sum, very few of the questions I was asked were actually questions that would measure and determine my ability to perform the tasks of this position.
Once I left the interview, I received a computer generated rejection email several weeks later letting me know I did not get the job. There was no reason given as to why I did not get the job in the email.
Lastly, I want to mention one useful thing for others who may interview with NYU. It seemed to me that NYU really emphasizes that you must have previous experience using their proprietary software. I think this is completely unrealistic. In my interview, I mentioned that while I didn’t have experience using their exact software, I have had experience and training using very similar software. The interviewer seemed concerned that I didn’t have this exact experience. Also, I was asked if I could use Excel during this interview. This is such a dumb question, but one you should be prepared for. I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that they are really, really picky about finding an exact match for the technical skills they’re looking for and they place significant value on having exact experience that matches the job duties.
