March 4 - Applied online
April 10 - Recruiter contact
April 11 - Recruiter phone screen. I happen to have experience working with this recruiter from a past company. We were successful before so this was a promising start.
April 17 - Hiring manager Zoom meeting. Only 30 minutes, but it felt positive. A bit awkward that she did a reference check while we were still speaking when I mentioned a mutual connection. Despite this, it was an unsolicited positive review for me, so she agreed to move me forward at this point.
April 19 - Received instructions from recruiter for Zoom panel interview with hiring manager plus two sales leaders. There is a case assignment to do a presentation as part of this 50 minute meeting. Basically, present the support services associated with the product as though one were already on the job in a launch scenario with a naive customer.
April 24 - Shared my presentation with the hiring manager (as a part of the instruction to do so minimum one day prior to the meeting). There were delays in pinning down a precise day, but I thought better to give time and maybe get any pertinent feedback sooner rather than later.
April 26 - NDA and vaccine attestations at this step. Finally scheduled for May 1.
May 1 - Zoom panel day. Hiring manager emailed just prior to the meeting concerned about not receiving my presentation yet. I replied confirming that I did and perhaps this was a sign of things to come. One sales leader didn't show up. Hiring manager had a noticeably different demeanor that felt much more...distant and artificial. Not sure if it was because of the presentation confusion or something else. Sales leader's first question kind of set the tone. "What is a misconception people have about you?" He gave an example about himself. "People think I'm a nice person, but I'm really not." I find this aggressive and sociopathic. There is no professional setting where you should say something like that. Overall, I could have polished a few things, but in the end it didn't seem like there was mutual respect and any appreciation for the level of detail and time I put into the presentation. Here's the clincher - the hiring manager even mentioned one important aspect that I supposedly missed in my research. I didn't challenge, because I figured if anyone should know the product coverage requirements, it should be someone like her. After the meeting, I emailed her to thank for pointing this out and that I was still curious where I perhaps should have looked to find out this important and crucial piece of info on the MAC website. I included the direct source from my research as well in order to show my thought process to reach a different conclusion. No response and we are into the next week as I am writing this. I wonder if they leave their customers hanging like this. I think the answer should be at her fingertips since this was her own exercise and furthermore, if not, I can't imagine how low in regard she holds me to simply ignore my email. This ghosting behavior needs to be called out.
