I was approached by Boehringer Ingelheim’s Australian branch (via a recruiter on LinkedIn) for a newly created customer strategy role in their Macquarie Park office. Application process was straightforward and I was shortlisted for an interview, which was scheduled for one hour via Zoom with a panel of three. In my experience a panel of three is a little overboard for a first interview and tips the balance of the interview somewhat heavily. The interview went for nearly two hours and was a mix of general job history questions and behavioural questions (“tell us about a time when you...”). They also asked questions about salary expectations and motivations. So far so good. I was contacted for a second interview within a week and an interview was scheduled, this time with a panel of four. Definitely some raised eyebrows on my part at this point re the number of people I was interviewing with. The real issue for me was the “case study” that they asked me to prepare. The case study was the longest, most broad and multi faceted case study that I’ve ever been asked to prepare for (even compared to roles that are at a manager level, which I have been successful for). The case study asked for my approach to solving certain customer segmentation problems (fair enough) but also wanted me to advise the company on what their customer strategy should be and how they should execute this across various stages and segments. Starting to sound like a brief to an external agency? The kicker was the final component which asked me to put some thought into how a legacy company like Boehringer could transform itself into the Uber or Spotify of the pharmaceuticals world and what would need to happen to achieve this goal. Mind you, they had been very transparent in the first interview that this was a newly created role and that the customer strategy capability simply didn’t exist within the company. The case study read to me at best like a tyre kicking exercise, and at worst, like an act of collating responses from multiple candidates to collect IP. At this point I very nearly considered withdrawing as I didn’t feel comfortable with providing a genuine response to the questions and did not feel the level of work required was appropriate for an interview. Despite my feeling, I pushed on with preparing a presentation but deliberately kept it high level. I emphasised my approach and focused on how I would approach answering each of the questions and what I would look to, rather than creating a customer strategy from scratch without any tangible data or insights available to me. The second interview went for around 90 minutes and similar discussions were had around job history and salary expectations. Within a week I heard back from the recruiter that the company had decided to go with the other candidate and the feedback for me was that my presentation didn’t go into enough detail. Oddly enough, I noticed the same job ad and role posted again on LinkedIn a few weeks later and it continues to be advertised today. Go figure! I’m providing this feedback for candidates who may be thinking about applying for this role or similar roles, so they may know what to expect during the process. I’d also highly recommend refraining from sharing personal IP and know how (which has been accumulated over multiple years) with a company that has no obligation to hire you. Perhaps if I had put more thought into the case study I could have been successful, but the bigger concern for me is that I may still have been unsuccessful for the role while contributing my IP and know how to another company. Lastly I just want to add that I was successful for another customer experience role which I applied for concurrently with the one at Boehringer Ingelheim. Not only is my role more senior (senior manager level), but the case study I needed to prepare for this role was much more specific and appropriate for an interview case study. I’ve decided to share my feedback as it didn’t sit well with me - then or now.