I was contacted via LinkedIn by a hiring manager at Avail that was sourcing candidates for a CSM role. Started with an initial phone screen and progressed to the “final” interview that consisted of a mock presentation and three hours of interviews with about 9 people (including the founders). Highest level, the presentation was to prepare a deck defining Customer Happiness and a proposed scoring model. The process was straightforward enough but there were several things that made it a disappointing experience. I’ll try to call out a few below: - Salary. The hiring manager, also a former CSM at Avail, understood my salary requirements on our first call and invited me to a four hour interview before telling me the salary range was about 35% lower. - Job description. The job description sent to me via LinkedIn was different than what was discussed on the phone. This is not a traditional CSM role (which I was fine with) and I was asked repeatedly if this is “what I really wanted to do”. I was also told in my interviews the job description was not great and I was asked if I even thought this role was necessary at this stage of their company? It definitely felt like they were unsure if this was even going to happen. I was perplexed... - Presentation. In most mock interviews, the expectation is to highlight very general product knowledge, presentation style, and ability to answer questions. This presentation and subsequent interviews felt more like I was consulting for the company, explaining how my past companies have been structured, and answering general Customer Success questions etc. They did ask for my address so that they could send a thank you gift, which I thought was a nice touch given the length of the interviews and all the prep. - Follow up. After my final interview, I was contacted a few days later by the hiring manager to hop on an hour long call to discuss salary again and review their internal tools. This sounded promising because in my experience you are never contacted after a final interview without a hiring decision. This is was given the true salary. I remained committed to the process and reviewed internal tools. - Decision. I was contacted via email with a generic message about how they were moving forward with other candidates. While I completely respect the decision, I do feel it is a slap in the face to candidates when they dedicate time and energy to prepare and present —perhaps even more so while they are searching for jobs during a pandemic. What I found most bizarre was the hour long follow up call only to receive a rejection EMAIL a few days later. I did reach out for feedback and was told that I didn’t have the “go getter” attitude they were looking for and that they expected more questions from me in advance. Totally valid if that’s what they believe but extremely disappointing delivery of the news. Also, the mystery thank you gift? Never received. I will add that everyone that I met was perfectly nice but perhaps the start up life is not for me if this is how information is communicated. I think I dodged a bullet.