Academy Sports + Outdoors

Application

I applied online. The process took 4+ weeks. I interviewed at Academy Sports + Outdoors (Katy, TX) in September 2012.

Interview

I applied online and was contacted about 3 weeks later to do a phone interview and in-person panel interview with a presentation the following week. I was told over the phone that I should expect a lower salary because this job would be with a "retail company."
I went to their corporate headquarters in Katy, which turned out to be a long, dingy shopping strip that had been turned into "corporate" offices.
I did a presentation and then 5 managers took turns firing questions off. They asked me about the presentation I designed, why I chose that topic, what I knew about it. They asked a lot of questions about my resume and some behavorial-style questions.
They asked me if I had any questions and as I began to ask my first one, they started looking at their watches. When I asked about the flexibility of work hours and the possibility of working non-traditional hours such as 7am-4pm, this triggered one of the managers to go into a tirade about how employees are supposed to be available and at their workstations until 5pm every day and that this is the expectation of the company.
 Well, that removed the reason I would consider taking a lower salary! When salaries are lower than industry standard, companies really should be offering other perks to attract and retain talent. Through this interview, my impression of the training department was that it's very controlled and top-down. I got the feeling I would suffocate under the rigidity and my contributions would not be valued. These managers were not interested in "selling" the position or the company to me. They didn't discuss any perks or benefits. They didn't convince me that Academy would be a great company for which to work and I walked away with a pretty negative impression of how things are run.
After two interviews, I never heard back from them.