I was asked to do an initial 30-minute phone call interview to start, with the potential second interview being the final one. During this phone call, I spoke with someone from HR and she asked me typical behavioral questions, nothing technical. I was extremely prepared for this call, having read the 10Ks, 10Qs, Corporate Responsibility reports, etc. and I had in mind a few similarities that the HR person and I had in common for conversation’s sake. Unfortunately, we never got this far, as the person was extremely disinterested and clearly tired the entire phone call. Right off the bat, she seemed like she had other things she’d rather be doing than taking this interview with me.
She spent the first 15 minutes asking the typical questions like “why are you interested in CarMax?” and “what kind of management style do you prefer?” as well as listening to my work experience. Then, she left about 15 minutes for me to ask questions to her. Thankfully I had an entire list prepared, because she gave such short, low-effort, generic HR answers that I had to cycle through my questions more quickly than expected. I felt like I learned absolutely nothing about the rotational program that I couldn’t get directly from their job posting.
The cherry on top was when I was mid-sentence, answering a question of hers, and she just audibly, very loudly YAWNED into the phone like a cartoon character... She made no comment like “excuse me” or “sorry about that,” she genuinely seemed like she couldn’t care any less about what it was we were talking about... I was honestly pretty appalled. Then, she started telling me about how management takes suggestions seriously, which at first sounded like a good thing, but then she began telling me how she talked to her manager about how she doesn’t feel appreciated enough for how much work she does, and getting verbal praise from management isn’t enough for her. They responded to her complaint by installing some sort of incentive system that ranks employees, like some sort of score board. She let me know that “she’s not *disappointed* but...” basically she’s not getting the monetary compensation she thinks she deserves?
The entire interview left me feeling exhausted, like I had done all the legwork to keep the conversation going with an otherwise disgruntled employee. I knew getting off that phone call that I wasn’t going to get pushed to the final interview; that experience was just too unpleasant all around. They confirmed my suspicions by sending me an email at around 1AM on a Saturday night (about a week and a half later) about how they’ll be moving on with other candidates. If HR works these ridiculous hours, I can’t imagine what accounting does... I can see where her apparent exhaustion comes from.