I was shown around the store, which had yet to be refurbished. The potential employer joked about how the estate agent, that had the property before him, hadn't lasted long. There were offices to go upstairs, and an audience testing room to the left. Downstairs were to be the labs and the storage. Due to the building not being suitable for the interview, we went to a nearby cafe by foot.
The cafe was noisy, and just by a bus route. It was often hard to hear the interviewer, and vice versa - I'm sure some of my responses weren't heard. There was a shared 'head nodding' response going on which past a lot of time. The first bulk of the interview consisted of the interviewer explaining the history of the company and his own personal life, the company's brand and their change in marketing solutions (they had fired some organisation, another thing he joked about). This lasted around 30 minutes.
Once it was time to begin talking about me as a candidate, or my experience, I presented my CV and began asking a few questions with my print out of the job description. It was at this point that I was essentially informed that regardless of the fact that I had been invited to the interview, the interviewer had no intention of hiring me, mainly because I was 'too serious' and not what they were after - an easy going Millennial with a 'west coast vibe' (please note: I was wearing black jeans, a woollen shirt and sketchers shoes). My CV was never looked at by the employer, nor was my experience genuinely discussed. The main agenda of this short ten minutes was to visit my personal social media pages and inform me that I was not a social influencer. I attempted to remind the interviewer that the job description (which included experience in design, photography, videography, content producing, copywriting and marketing) was a very broad description, and that what I lacked in experience in social media management, I made up for with five years plus experience in the other content creating areas, and that I would be willing to learn and expand on what I already knew of marketing and social media management. At this junction, the interviewer said that he really liked my photography, and might consider giving me a temporary short term freelance gig. I started to pack up, as I hadn't come to the interview with the intention of finding more freelance work. He showed me their social media accounts, none of which had the so-called 'likes' he desired.
All in all disappointing, and a bit of a time wasting experience. The interviewer spent far too long talking about their startup, their past experiences, and paid little attention to me as a candidate. Essentially it wasn't worth the time spent travelling to Putney to meet with him, or the expense. Quite baffling as to why someone would call someone like me in for an interview if they already knew they didn't want my content producing expertise, and would rather hire any young thing with a camera on their phone that spends their days on Instagram.