I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Gartner in Feb 2025
Interview
I work in marketing and have been for years. I had a recruiter reach out to me on Linkedin asking if I would be interested in a quota bearing role selling Gartner to executives. Being a 'go with the flow' person I accepted an interview. First two rounds were very easy and a pleasant experience. Great people, great conversations, and they conducted interview prep between interviews. Collectively, I spent about 8 hours in this interview process between prep, notes, research, and interviews. I made it to the third and final round interview. The script was completely flipped. The recruiter was borderline rude, blunt, and brutally persistent. Which is fine. I understand wanting to know how someone would react under pressure. HOWEVER. I work in marketing. My experience is in marketing, and this recruiter had the audacity to sit there and in 'HR terms' basically say "all your experience is in marketing, why tf do you wanna work in sales for us." Meanwhile I sit there stammering because THEY RECRUITED ME. I didn't ask to work in this position. I am a very adaptable person and I have basic experience in sales areas by way of my job. I would happily learn their way of business and I'm confident I would succeed. But to sit there and basically demand that I have solely sales experience and then follow up with "what are you doing right now to improve your sales acumen" MEANWHILE I wasn't even job hunting.
To no one's surprise I didn't get the job and I'm left here feeling like I walked into a final exam with an A in the class and walking out with a 20% on the exam. solely because the material I was given to study wasn't even what was on the test.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
what are you doing to improve your sales acumen at this time.
Avoid this interview process at all costs. It felt like nothing more than a data gathering exercise rather than a genuine hiring effort. Every single round was conducted by a recruiter — I never spoke with an actual hiring manager or team member. A complete waste of time and effort. I would not recommend applying.
First round HR screening. Second round detailed personality analysis interview. Third round manager interview to ask about experience and motivations. Last round panel interview with presentation to describe why you're a good fit. Strong emphasis on personality fit.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Gartner
Interview
It was okay. Two interviews, phone call and zoom. Zoom was a bit weird all very feedback approached. Had to do a role play of a cold call, which I do everyday to someone who has no cold calling experience so not sure that’s the best judge
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How do you think you are doing - half way through the interview
Account Executive applicants have rated the interview process at Gartner with 3.5 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 43% positive. To compare, the company-average is 51.4% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Account Executive roles take an average of 30 days to get hired, when considering 288 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Gartner overall takes an average of 35 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Gartner as a Account Executive according to 288 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 25%
One on one interview: 19%
Group panel interview: 14%
Presentation: 12%
Skills test: 10%
Background check: 8%
Personality test: 5%
Drug test: 3%
IQ intelligence test: 2%
Other: 2%
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