The first interview was a one on one video conference with the hiring manager. The second interview was onsite with 7 people over a 4-5 hour period, about half a day of interviewing. I was told to wear business dress attire (suite/tie).
In both the online and face to face interview, the hiring manager was monitored by HR, which I found concerning. This position was unusual, in that it combined multiple jobs into one, including data scientist, Embedded Systems Developer, Enterprise Architect (oracle EBS), Data Warehousing/BI development, and team Manager. For the first interview with the HR rep and hiring manager, they basically went thru my entire resume and asked me why I left each job. I then interviewed with the enterprise architecture director who asked me about my architecture and IoT experience. The director emphasized that this was an onsite job, with no remote working. This contradicted what I had been told. The hiring manager said that 3 days onsite was good enough, however, it was later revealed that the controls manager only works onsite one day a week, because he is "high value". I was then told that they had recently fired someone because they took advantage of the remote working option. The lack of clarity around the remote working issue is a major problem with this organization and a huge red flag. In today's post-COVID world remote working is expected in the IT business. Coupled with the fact that this office is located in an undesirable area (Conyers) off of a dangerous stretch of highway, makes the problem even worse.
I then interviewed with the VP and program manager at the same time. The program manager was glad to see me, and it was evident that they desperately needed experienced help. The VP ranted about coding, and technology. Most questions were about my experiences, which fit very well with what they were looking for. The VP seemed worried about having someone in the job who would do coding and asked about it repeatedly. This is a red flag, because many companies will use a bait/switch tactic, presenting the role as management level with great opportunity when in reality it is just a glorified coding job that nobody wants. It was later revealed that the controls manager, which is the "twin" of the job I applied for, spends over 70% of his time coding. This statement revealed to me the truth of what the job was.
There was no technical interview or quiz, most all questions were directed at my experience, which I believed I answered to their satisfaction. They were definitely focused on the negative though, was were looking for reasons not to hire. I felt as though I deflected it all very well. However, they got confused about my management experience. I have over 20 years of management experience and somehow they got the impression I had not been a manager.
The kicker is that I never heard back at all from this company at all, one way or another. Despite burning a tank of gas, and an entire day with them, and going thru what appeared to be a serious interview, I got nothing. Nada. No response. Not even a "thank you for playing" email.
Given the line of questioning, the number of people I had to talk to, and their responses during the interview, I got the impression that this is a very political environment that is suffering badly from a serious lack of expertise. Most of them were mechanical engineers, with little to no experience in the fields they were managing.