I got the job interview by sending an unsolicited email to the recruiting staff. A couple weeks later, I got an email from the recruiting staff telling me that they'd like to set up a phone interview for an Analyst position. When it came time for the interview, I felt totally prepared. Since graduating college, I have had 2 years of work experience in consulting, analysis, document preparation, and even quantitative research using an economic model that I was able to teach myself to use. I was ready to discuss my work experience and how it would relate to the job.
The phone interview was extremely cold. At the start of the call, I was not even greeted with a friendly "How are you?", which was fine (though, a little rude and against basic conversation etiquette), but probably also indicative of the type of company this is. The person they had interview me was an Analyst, and started the conversation by saying that she recently graduated from college herself and had been working there for one year, and then she jumped into questions. It was clear that she had no experience in being an interviewer. Despite all of my work in consulting that would have been extremely relevant to the position, all she wanted to hear about was my undergraduate experience (!?!) and the type of research I encountered there. She even cut me off when I started to explain that I have had much more extensive research experience since graduating college, and said "I'm sorry, I only meant that I wanted to hear about the experience from undergrad." They are extremely interested in quantitative research experience, which is interesting because the job description does not list it as a requirement. Also, if you mention a research project that you did using a quantitative model (i.e., Stata), be prepared to discuss it at length, including what controls were used to conduct the study, etc.
Not once during the whole interview did she ask me what my strengths were, what I would be able to bring to the position, why I should be hired, etc. All she wanted to know was what the extent of my quantitative research was in undergrad and then wanted me to answer a case study question. I did not feel that she was able to get an accurate sense of who I am or what I would be like as an employee, which should be the whole point of the interview, right? The interviewer, who was acting as a representative of the company, came off as very unprofessional. I also got the feeling that since I did not go to Stanford like she did, that she never really gave me a chance from the start. I ended the call with a horrible feeling about the company as a whole, and also the feeling that if this is what the people are like here then this is not where I belong.
I'm not sure what the point is for the company to have what they call a "recruiting team" if they just delegate actual interviews/screening to lower-level staff members.