I applied via LinkedIn and received an email from the TA Manager about 2 weeks later for a phone screening. It was standard screening with the basic questions asked, and she advised the next round would be a conversation with the Sales Director. The call with the Sales Director was solid; again, standard questions about my experience and he explained more about Meltwater and why they were expanding the team. He said they were screening candidates for a final round group interview for the following Wednesday and invited me to the session. I received an email with more information on the group interview which included a presentation prompt that we needed to complete in 48 hours and a link to a NYT article that we were to discuss during the session. The group interview started promptly at 8:30am and included myself, 9 other candidates and 5 Meltwater employees (all from the sales team). It was a 3.5 hour session, which consisted of learning more about Meltwater, introducing ourselves, and working in teams to discuss the NYT article and present recommendations to the team. The session ended with a last-minute task; a 1-minute "quick sell" on something that we were passionate about. At the end of the session, we were asked to provide our contact info, and that they would call us within the hour with an update on who would make it to the *final* round, a 1:1 interview session that afternoon with the team. The final round with the team was fine, if a little ill-paced. I was asked to do a quick cold-call with one of the reps based on a prompt that I was just receiving and we talked more about what I wanted for my future. I didn't get an offer as they were looking for candidates who were more eager to jump into management much quicker.

This was an unusual interview process compared to all other interviews I have done. I applied to the Chicago, IL location for this job on LinkedIn and heard back from the Director of Talent in San Francisco. We chatted for about 45 minutes on the phone where she asked me about my resume and basically just explained the position. She ended the call by inviting me to a group interview. The group interview consisted of 11 candidates and a panel of 5 Meltwater employees. The first hour was essentially the panel introducing themselves and introducing Meltwater as a company. The second hour was them teaching us about all of the product offerings and functionality of the software. We broke into groups and had 10 minutes to work collaboratively on a case study that we had been expected to read prior to the interview. The third hour consisted of each candidate getting up and presenting a 3-slide powerpoint about themselves to the rest of the group. Then the final curveball was that each person had to stand up and speak passionately about a topic for one minute. After the three hour group shindig was over, we had to wait around in the area (downtown Chicago in the middle of winter, brrr) for a phonecall to see if we had been selected for an individual interview. This was a little bit of a waste of time as I literally had to frame my entire day around this interview. However, once I got into the individual interview they really drilled down to my skillset by having me do mock sales calls and answering hypothetical scenarios.