This was the most uncomfortable interview I have ever had. I was genuinely excited to interview here because the CEO seemed very down to earth and easy to talk to. Unfortunately, this is not the impression he gave me during the interview.
I had applied for this job as someone who openly had no sales experience. The job was advertised as having part time options and requiring no experience, I had also made it clear I was a full time student. After I had received an interview offer I was surprised to find it was difficult to get a hold of Slant, due to a full inbox. I also was surprised when I got a hold of the front desk, only for the CEO to answer and interview me. I have worked for small companies before but this was confusing as I had seen many job postings for Slant in the last few months. For them to not actually have a front desk or HR was odd and was concerning to me. These variables got me wondering what their employee turnover is like. This seemed the only possible answer for having lots of job postings as well as no HR.
During the interview I was grilled on sales as well as other business tactics relating to my degree background. I did my best to answer those things I was knowledgeable about, but every time I gave an answer he was clearly very dissatisfied. He made numerous degrading comments during the interview. After a long back and forth of him trying to get a very specific answer out of me he replied "that was a great way of saying a whole lot of nothing". Mind you this was on a topic I was actually knowledgeable on, however these questions had absolutely nothing to do with the position I was interviewing for. When I had the opportunity to ask questions, I asked about things such as cross-functional collaboration. He didn't know what this term meant and in response scoffed at the term as if I had made it up. However, this is a basic business term. After a pause he said "If you're asking what you do when you need to talk to someone, from say the marketing team, I expect you to walk over yourself to ask the question". Needless to say, that's not what I was asking. I was asking about what cross-functional collaboration took place there.
Overall, I was overwhelmed with negative comments and irrelevant questions. It was clear after about a minute he did not like me. Why did he choose to continue the interview? I have no idea.
I could go on about other comments and how terrible this interview made me feel. I hope the CEO takes some of the feedback he has received into consideration. I genuinely believe Slant has some great goals, but I can't help but feel this is somewhere no one would want to work given the current leadership. There are a variety of theories I have as to why I was treated this way, but ultimately I don’t definitively know. Best of luck to anyone else who interviews here. I hope by then things have improved.
