Note this is a review for Sapient (m)PHASIZE, a subsidiary of Sapient
I initially received an email from the manager for whom I would have worked if offered the position, asking for a phone interview with him and 2 others. The conversation included inquiries into my credentials and questions about statistics and data analysis. I passed this round and was invited to an all-expenses-paid in-person interview at their headquarters in Westport, CT. Here is the moment when things started to become strange: the hiring manager scheduled and paid for the airfare, but asked me to make reservations and pay for other expenses myself which would later be paid for by the company. I'm not in the position to just shrug off expenses, so the fact that this was explicitly communicated as all-expenses-paid was important. Had it not been communicated as all-expenses-paid, I would have requested for a Skype video interview or would have found a less costly way to do the trip than what was suggested by the hiring manager. $90 Uber rides to and from LaGuardia as well as reservations for a 4 star hotel are not the type of expenses that a constrained budget can handle well.
I get to the interview, and things initially seem OK. It's a small company, operating seemingly independent of its parent company, Sapient; so I didn't expect the kind of presentation that is common among interviews with larger organizations. There were four interviews in total: a VP, two analysts, and a manager. The interview with the VP and one of the analysts was very much conversational. Questions here mostly related to marketing (one can broadly categorize the company's services under marketing analytics), and, strangely, much of the conversation was done on their end. The second analyst was supposed to conduct a technical skills assessment lasting 45 minutes, but only asked three questions lasting barely 10 minutes. We spent the rest of our time talking about nothing relevant to the position. The last interviewer asked the behavioral-type questions. At the end of the day, we were told that we would *definitely* hear either a yes or a no response in about a month (it seems long, but they were holding interviews every Friday for a few weeks).
Why the negative review? Here are the main reasons: 1) Despite telling us that we would definitely hear back with a yes or a no, they still haven't gotten back to me. It's been 4 weeks since I was told that I would receive a response. I've sent a few emails to the hiring manager; not surprisingly, I received no response to those either. 2) It has been 2 months since the interview, and I still haven't received any reimbursement for the trip's expenses. Some might not find this to be an issue, but I think, to some extent, it (as well as point 1) speaks to the company's deficient caliber of professionalism. As a company, why give your word for something if you have no intention of adhering to it? 3) For a position purported to require a large amount of analytic work, the interview was lacking a true technical assessment, especially in comparison to interviews for similar positions at other companies. Looking back, this seems like a red flag.