My interview started great, but there were quite a few red flags throughout the interview that led me to saying no.
I was contacted via LinkedIn with recruiter settings on. I had a great phone call initially for a screening and came in the next day for an in-person interview. I was told I'd just be meeting with the person I would be working under and we'd meet for about 30 minutes. That interview went great, she was great to talk to and there were a lot of thoughtful questions.
She then mentioned she wanted me to meet someone else, and I had no idea about this portion so I waited a bit for that person to come in. During that time, the conference room door was cracked open a bit, and I saw three employees talking. One of them looked at me (he was underdressed a bit for the weather in Nebraska at the moment) and loudly said "this girl's probably thinking, 'who's that (insert inappropriate language here) in the shorts and flip flops'". Shocked at what I heard, I looked over and he noticed I heard him, then he laughed and told the two other employees, "oh, she heard me!" and kept laughing.
I then met with the second person I'd be told I was meeting with. The questions were a little less thoughtful, and mostly skimmed down repeats from my previous interview. I understand not every interviewer is going to brief with the person before and ask what they heard, but I don't think any of the questions varied at all. It was word for word my last interview, just skimmed down for someone with little to no design experience. I also asked how open they were to making changes (part of my role would be updating a lot of the design to a very different vision than their current brand), just to gauge how flexible they were to accomplish their new goals, and I got a pretty sour look from the interviewer for even suggesting making some brand changes. At the end of this interview, she wanted me to meet with the CEO and *now* asked if I was okay on time.
I waited even longer to finally meet with the CEO, and I was surprised after checking on here that the dress was business casual, to find him pretty underdressed for the role. I've worked in casual dress environments but even then, we dressed up for interviews to make the experience more professional. While explaining my background, the CEO spent five minutes or so texting someone with his phone directly in my face, only to cut me off a minute or two in to ask me about something I'd already said. I was also asked the same questions as before, even more skimmed down to someone with little design experience, and my thoughts during this interview were that this role wouldn't really have as much innovation as they said they would, but rather just fill a design gap they had because their current person was stretched too thin.
Overall, I left feeling pretty disrespected by upper management, and a little shocked at the quick glimpse I had of company culture. I had great first conversations with the person that would have been my coworker and the office assistant but was pretty shocked as I moved along. I wouldn't recommend anyone interview here.
