To speak on the interview process with AMS alone, I was not given much information or clarity on the entire interview process or steps. Every interview I was notified with “you’ll maybe have to speak to a few more people, but we’ll reach out”. Upon completing what was my 5th or 6th interview consisting of the same behavioral questions, the manager called me to say I was their “silver medalist”, wanting to express they had liked me but also had another candidate they were interviewing who they liked better. In the recruiting space, we should not be using that phrase whatsoever. The manager told me there was a different role they were also looking to hire, but the current role I interviewed for would be given to someone else. Again with not much clarity, spoke with 2-3 more people and got the alternate role.
Upon starting, I was facing technical issues due to a name change I was processing in the work system (I just recently got married). The client manager expressed her frustration with me having changed my name because of the technical issues it was causing. She expressed that client company was a big company and therefore these technical changes could be difficult (which in my mind, shouldn’t there be a better process if the client company is such a big company?). At the end of the day, I felt like she was making me feel bad about changing my name. There were other major red flags, like saying something “sounds Chinese” to them if they don’t understand a particular technical topic (we were hiring for technical roles). She say this a lot, regardless of private setting (just us two) or many people on a call. She’d say this on a call with all of the interns (Chinese students included!) giving their presentation on what they’ve worked on over the semester. While asking about whether a student needed sponsorship/work authorization, she’d outright say things like “are you a domestic student or international?” And even in the excel, she’d notate students as domestic or international (another huge no-go in the recruiting space). Aside from this, there was a large amount of bias that was happening when sourcing, interviewing, and reviewing these students ie. assuming they are an “international” because they have a particular cell phone area code (therefore filtering those resumes out), if she deemed a school program to have arrogant students, anyone mentioning they were a part of that program, she’d automatically deem as “not a good fit”, etc, etc.
Aside from these huge recruiting red-flags, it was quickly clear to me there was no process, system, or organization in any form for this internship program. A very disorganized excel was the main source for logging or tracking any information. None of the information could actually be managed via the excel functions because there were multiple tables in one sheet of excel (completely defeating the purpose of using an excel spreadsheet). I was met with daily requests from the client manager, ranging from filling out data into different cells (data entry), reminding the manager to ship a package, pulling a .csv file and then sending it back to them. This role from the very start was supposed to be more of a strategic, consulting role, rather than a tactical admin role. Or at least that is what I was told.
The manager would continue to bombard my Microsoft Teams/email in an incredibly disorganized, unclear fashion with different minuscule tasks to complete all day, even ones that seemed so quick and small, it would take less time to do it herself than asking me to do it. Part of me told myself this could be part of the training, learning process, so I pressed on for a few weeks.
It would be incredibly disorienting and difficult for me to keep getting pinged with tasks throughout the day while also doing other tasks the manager had assigned, so I brought up establishing a cadence where they could send me a list of tasks at the end or beginning of the day (or essentially at a set time). The manager had rejected it, saying it wasn’t their “managing style” and wasn’t sure if they could change that. I brought up process improvements as well, all which were rejected in no time, as the manger was against change.
I brought these things up to my AMS manager, who had specifically asked for feedback regarding the client manager. They seemed like they really wanted to help me, and told me they would go back to the client manager to get a status update on how things were going.
To my lovely surprise, they followed up with me a few days after saying they were going to pull me from the client account due to a loss of trust, and that I was not meeting the client manager’s standards. They could not provide any information into anything specific, saying that we should not linger on the past but move forward. Avoid if you're looking for a healthy workplace!
