Overall, I felt my entire interview process for the Copywriter II, Gap North America Online position was unprofessional. After submitting my resume and cover letter to the company, I received an email from an internal company recruiter three days later. The recruiter scheduled the phone interview for the week after next. I sent an email to the recruiter confirming the upcoming interview and receiving a phone call.
On the phone interview day, the recruiter failed to contact me. I waited for thirty minutes to receive a call. During this time, I did not receive an email from the recruiter notifying me of any delays or a request to reschedule the interview. Since I did not receive any communications from the recruiter, I decided to call. The recruiter did not have time to interview. As a result, the phone interview was rescheduled to occur two days later.
The second phone interview attempt was not good. After waiting for approximately fifteen minutes, I received an email from the recruiter notifying me of a delay; the recruiter promised to call me once their phone call was completed. The recruiter did fulfill this promise and called me for a phone interview.
When the recruiter called me for the phone interview, I was quickly notified they did not have time to speak with me and only had twenty-five minutes for the interview. I was asked "to read through my resume and provide my knowledge on the Gap brand." At first, I was confused with the request due to the abrupt manner in which it was asked. While wrapping up a summarized overview of my resume, I was abruptly stopped by the recruiter before providing my knowledge on the Gap brand. The recruiter emphasized that my background contained no exact retail industry experience. I tried providing a few counter examples regarding my writing and e-commerce experiences, and their correlation to the position, but this did not help. The recruiter offered to keep my resume and ended the interview.
Through this interview, I learned that one will have a difficult time being offered a corporate position if they do not have exact retail industry skills on their resume. I do not feel that candidates with excellent transferable skills, related to open positions, are given an opportunity to provide a valuable perspective to the company. However, I would encourage anyone to give their application process a try because it could change with time.