Havertys Copywriter interview questions

Interviewed with vp marketing and staff copywriter in a conference room. They provided a thorough job description and presented the company in a professional manner. Samples of my writing were viewable on 2 personal websites but there was no internet access in the room. I assume they viewed my writing portfolio after the interview.

Interviewing with this company was an absolutely horrible experience. I met with 2 people; we conversed for nearly an hour. One of them was some sort of head honcho in the marketing department and the other was a “senior” level person who looked fresh out of college. There were no difficult questions; it was like shooting the breeze. The negative part came later. I was made to wait for more than a week to learn the outcome, and then I was given an especially hateful brush-off by the more executive of the two interviewers. Which might have been less offensive if she hadn’t taken an idea I gave her for the company website and implemented it right away, and if she hadn’t so eagerly pumped me for information about Portland, Oregon, where to go, what to see, etc. The exec, in the interview, told me she had never seen a business profile like mine. Did I have a premium account? No, I explained. It’s just a matter of knowing how to arrange and showcase a portfolio in the site matrix you’ve got to work with. (In other words, my design savvy, if given a chance, might have woken up the company’s tired presentation.) She went on and on, seemingly in praise of my imagination (an important quality for a copywriter to have) then hired someone else and didn’t bother to break the news to me with any kind of finesse or regret or basic courtesy, let alone savoir faire. She asked me what could improve Havertys website: I suggested changing the dark mocha background color to something lighter, brighter, because the darkness framing every page tended to envelop the products as opposed to making them stand out. Within days – poof! – the dark paneling was gone and a creamy off-white took its place. I complimented her on the change and received this curious reply: "Wish I could say the changes are intentional, but there are all sorts of changes that keep happening (good and bad) without any intervention on our part!" When asked why I wasn’t hired: “We met a candidate with specific home décor and furniture experience.” Oh, really? Her terse dishonesty omits the facts that I do have specific home décor writing clips, which she’d presumably glanced at, and that the job description emphasized strongly creative, imaginative product copy regardless of whether it was for interiors retail or not. The job posting listed “an interest in home décor” among its nice-to-haves, not as a core requirement. I drove from Augusta to Atlanta and back again for this interview, and that is the kind of pernicious double-standard I got in return. Imagination has no place in the marketing department at Havertys. And ethics don’t either.