I applied online through LinkedIn, and received a request for a phone interview 2 days later. The phone interview was nice, and I got to know the company. I then had a phone interview with one of the directors, who would become my immediate supervisor should I be hired (as I understood). I was then explained the process of the full interview.
Interview Process
I was to create a 1 hour presentation, 30 minutes on myself, and 30 minutes on an SBIR topic that I had to research and produce a product plan for myself. The interview would take place virtually due to the pandemic.
I spent probably over 20 hours researching the topic and producing a presentation to show. Considering the fact that there were no available topics that were comfortably in my wheelhouse, I had to choose one that I though I could quickly research on the fly, which ended up being much more difficult than I thought it would be. Regardless, I thought that the presentation went well, and I received mostly positive feedback from those who saw it. I was given the chance to defend choices that I made that they disagreed with, and I got the impression that I did so to their satisfaction. All in all, the interview, while difficult to prepare for, went fine, and everyone who I spoke to was pleasant, kind, and interesting to talk to. The person who would be my direct manager was speaking to me as if he was strongly expecting me to receive an offer (giving me tips on negotiating the offer, etc). After the interview, I received an email stating that "Everyone believes that you have great credentials and would make a good fit for our group", depending on grants that they were waiting on.
Problems
My problems with the interview process come from a couple of places. First, while I was applying, the company was apparently undergoing restructuring. The department that I was applying to was about to be absorbed into another department, which put their ability to give me an offer in jeopardy. In addition, the company was awaiting receiving funding for the year, and my employment was apparently dependent on whether or not the funding came through. All of this upset me, because I am unsure why they would go through the process of a full interview cycle with a candidate if they weren't even sure if they would be able to hire them.
Finally, after the interview, I was told that I would be contacted by their recruiter. I never got an email, and reached out multiple times afterwards to follow up on the interview. After this entire process, and what I felt was quite positive feedback, I was ghosted by the company.
This put the entire interview process into a different light for me. When I was given the brief for the interview presentation, a few "mental alarm bells" went off; it seemed suspicious to me that a company would ask for a complete (and, based on the brief I was given, a rather detailed) plan for designing and producing a product based on a real and current SBIR topic. In retrospect, it feels very strongly like a scam, in that they are trying to get job-seekers to do the heavy lifting on finding and planning out easy products for them to invest time into. This may not truly be the case, but that was the feeling that I got after looking back over the entire process as a whole.
Overall, I would advise caution when interacting with this company.
