I had read a few negative reviews on Glassdoor about interviews at Reingold before I went into mine, and, boy, were they accurate.
The process started with a typical quick HR phone screening just to verify your qualifications. From there, I was scheduled to speak with the hiring manager, which also went extremely well and he then emailed me a "test" on Microsoft Excel in which I was asked to complete either a set of questions related to Paid Search or another set related to Paid Social. Pretty standard stuff for this type of role, although I did find this particular assessment to be quite difficult and confusing - took me several hours to complete. The assessment was also timed and I had just 48 hours from the moment the email was sent to me on a Saturday morning to complete it.
A week or two after submitting my test I got another email requesting an in-person interview. The interview was group/panel style with new interviewers every 30 minutes or so - again, pretty standard.
The first person I met was with someone who I believe is a Vice President within the company hierarchy. We had a very good conversation about the role, culture, etc. Where it all started to go downhill, though, is when I had my interview with the hiring manager (whom, as I said above, I had a great phone conversation with a few weeks prior). We had a pretty good discussion for a while, up until we began reviewing the aforementioned "test" and he seemed pretty put off by the fact that I only completed the Search section of the assessment, even though it said to choose which section to complete. In his mind, I should have completed both sections (despite the time constraints) and he let me know about it fairly aggressively. I guess this continued to eat at him, because in another situational-based question in which he asked something along the lines of, "Have you ever not been able to deliver for a customer on time and how did you handle it?" I explained a situation in which I was faced with extenuating circumstances with a vendor that caused a delay, how I responded, and how I made adjustments to try and resolve the issue. Believe me when I say that this man did NOT like my response at all. He began to get very combative with me, even questioning the policy and procedures of my current company (i.e., asking me why we don't have a specific plan in place to catch this particular issue on the front end). He was truly getting angry with me and even raised his voice, and it seemed like the more I tried to explain that this was an issue on the vendor's side and that I did my job to keep the customer happy, the angrier he kept getting. Super weird and super uncomfortable situation.
At this point I knew that the interview was over and I had already lost all interest in ever working for this company. And that was when the final group came in and put on the most unprofessional and ridiculous display of an interview I have ever been a part of. It was just two guys (one younger; one older) who were clearly just in there to goof off and entertain themselves. The worst was at one point I asked a question to talk about their roles, what they do, and how it relates to the position I was interviewing for. When the younger guy began to respond, the older one interjected and said "lets play a game, I'll answer all questions for you and you answer all for me". Seriously. I had to spend the whole next 30 minutes talking to one person while someone else answered for him. It was just bizarre and made the entire company look horrible. As annoyed as I was, I was just glad to get it all over-with.
Like I said, I knew I didn't want this job anymore before the interview was over. Even if they had made an offer it would have been rejected. Interviews are two-way streets, in my opinion, and it definitely felt like Reingold forgot that.
It's pretty difficult to run a candidate off in an interview, and from reading these reviews it seems like I'm not the only one this has happened to.
