After an initial phone interview, I was asked to come in for an in person interview with a group of people. From the moment I showed up for the interview, it was down hill.
When I showed up, there was no receptionist to be found, finally the internal recruiter came out to meet me and asked if a packet had been prepared for me, which it wasn't. The scheduled room for my interview was being used so they used an empty office instead.
The first young lady I interviewed with kept apologizing for not knowing anything since she had only been there 2 months. She gave me the impression that it was all chaos and not really happy there. The 2nd young lady I met with came in with a sense of authority that I was not sure it was real. She informed me that this position would be reporting to her and that she wanted:
a) someone who can come in and fix everything since 2 years ago they had a bad system implementation that has not been fixed since then. Yep, not fixed in 2 years!
b) someone who can be a leader and mentor to the staff
c) accomplish this on their own as she was not able to give guidance since she was never at her desk
d) develop process and procedures as everything was currently being done manually
I might be making false assumptions here but it sounded to me like she wanted to hire someone to do her job.
The 3rd woman was the most enjoyable interview. She was candid and upfront letting me know that everyone there is young. Yes, "young" kept coming up with every person I interviewed with.
The 4th and final interview was with yet another young lady who didn't ask my anything at all, we just talked about life and that was the end of the interview.
Summary: I felt as if the finance group was in chaos and without any experienced/seasoned members in the team to help lead the bright and young talent there. If your main objective is to hire bright young people that is fine, but fail to understand how that is working out for them so far if they remain in constant chaos.
After the interview I felt it was a waste everyone's time. If the young people making the decisions want other young people, why bring in an older experienced person at all if they are going to feel threatened by age and experience?