I submitted for the Associate Program Manager position on-line. A week or two later, I was contacted by e-mail for a phone interview. There were two interviewers scheduled for the phone interview. I was called ~10 minutes after the scheduled interview time, with the 2nd interviewer joining the call ~20 minutes late. I feel this would have bothered me for an interview at any other company, but hey, this is Blizzard!
The interview itself was very straight forward regarding my past work experience. Questions were very general, and I feel I may have over-answered them to some extent. I have 11+ years of software development experience, and my over qualification for an "associate" level position quickly became a topic of discussion. I believe this is ultimately why the process will not be moving forward. We ended with the typical, "do you have any further questions for me?" back and forth, and the interview ended uneventfully.
To me, the interviewers felt distracted and bit unprepared. I also got the sense that they didn't expect to be interviewing someone with my level of experience for an entry level position. We did also discuss the expectation that whoever took this role would likely be in that entry level position for a minimum of 3+ years (which didn't match with my expectations). Both sides agreed that it was good that we cleared this up early in the process.
It should be noted that I have also applied for several other "Program Manager", and "Senior Program Manager" positions at Blizzard. I have not been contacted for interviews for those positions. I am worried that I've hit a catch-22 with Blizzard. For more senior positions, they want someone who has previous experience with games development in a production role. However, I don't feel I have any good opportunity (at least with Blizzard) to obtain the entry level experience that's needed to even land the interview for the more senior position.
It did make me feel good after the interview, knowing that the likely deciding factor in me not being considered for the position was my over qualification. That said, it bothers me that my work history in IT outside of the gaming industry may turn out to be my biggest weakness. Who knows; I could be completely wrong and something else turned them off to me. I intend to keep submitting for qualified positions until something sticks, or I find better opportunity elsewhere.
29 days from on-line submission to final rejection e-mail.