I have 15 years of restaurant experience, some as an owner, and 10 years of outbound sales leadership, which includes training hundreds of successful outbound reps. This is important. I don’t feel that this interview was a reflection of the company’s values.
I applied for an AE role and the ATS auto-rejected me instantly. So I cold called a dept leader and introduced myself with the above and said I think I deserve a shot. They agreed. All of the sudden I get an email from the internal recruiter about how much they love my background and would love to interview me. They led with platitudes and the only reason they were interviewing me is because a superior said so. I think they could have spared the empty pleasantries.
We bang out 4 interviews in a short amount of time, which was great. Then, before the final interview, the previous interviewers told me that if you get to the final, "It's just a vibe check" implying that the job is in the bag. I've been around long enough to know not to say that and not to believe it.
Auto-reject form email. No feedback. More platitudes. Inhuman.
So I emailed back and asked for actual feedback. Because, well, look at my resume. I said that after 4 interviews and a project, they should have enough feedback to tell me why and where I fell short.
The answer floored me. I'm still shocked. The email was 80% empty praise about how much everyone loved me:
"The depth of your sales acumen"
"Genuinely impressed"
"Your preparation and ability to handle objections and close deals really stood out."
"We believe you have a strong foundation in sales, and your leadership experience is clear"
All obvious platitudes. Zero percent feedback. You hire those people without question because they’re rare.
But then: “After careful consideration, we felt you would be best suited for the Inbound Account Executive role. Unfortunately, we don't have any open inbound spots at the moment.”
Were we in the same interviews? My adult working career of 25 years has been in restaurant operations/ownership and building outbound sales orgs. Given the opportunity, I don’t know that I’d want to be on an inbound team. It’s just not challenging enough. But no one ever thought to bring this up with me to defend my position. We spent four interviews talking about my cold calling acumen and restaurant ownership. And at the end of every interview, I ask if there are any hesitations moving forward. Emphatic no’s every time. Which clearly was not the case.
The absolute disconnect was clear.
So here's the question. I exceeded all qualifications on the JD. I've been told I knocked the interview process out of the park. If any of this were genuine, I'd be an AE at Owner. When a candidate checks that many boxes and has that amount of direct expert industry knowledge, you hire them. Because I've been doing this a long, long time, I know that it wasn't because of my experience. But they ghosted me when I asked for actual feedback.
At the end of the day, it was a bad experience. The communication was dismal and insincere. It was loaded with platitudes. Frankly it was completely dehumanized. They followed their values only as far as it suited their own agendas. When it came to anything that only helped me, they couldn’t be bothered. I had to chase for the interview, for feedback, was told to message on LinkedIn, but those got ignored.
The company values:
Obsess Over Customers. Candidates are your recruiter’s and your hiring managers’ customers. There was no obsession. In fact, it was almost all automated and full of insincere platitudes to feed the candidates’ egos.
Bring Good Energy: Your recruiter couldn’t even turn the camera on. The last interviewer’s camera was pointed directly up their nose the entire interview.
Move Fast: the actual interviews were SCHEDULED fast. But anything outside of that like asking for feedback or even getting the interview is painfully slow and/or just didn’t happen. It’s only fast when it’s in the best interest of the company.
Build as an Owner: That also means retaking ownership over a Draconian process that has been completely dehumanized and automated at your company. I know that the age-old excuse is that recruiters are too busy with resumes and interviews to provide them all with direct feedback. Stop. That’s not even remotely true. I’ve interviewed and hired hundreds of people over the years. Every single person I personally spoke with got a personalized email with why I went with other candidates and what they could do to improve. All that while managing a team, building out processes, analyzing pipeline, and a myriad of other things I COULD use as excuses. But I choose to respect my candidates’ time. It’s definitely a choice. Hiring is a very simply process and I’ve hired all the way up to C-Level. “Too busy” are words not in my vocabulary and they shouldn’t be in anyone’s who is hiring, managers or recruiters.
And lastly…
Scale Yourself: This is that opportunity to commit to respecting the time of candidates, especially with the amount of hours required for a successful interview process. Owner needs to scale above its current process.