Following a decent interview with the gatekeeper in HR, I was pushed through to a second-round interview with a hiring point person. That interview involved a lot of random questions that had "no wrong answers," as I was told, and seemed pointless. More than a week later, I emailed the person who interviewed more to follow up, as they had dropped the ball. I was pushed through to the writing assignment portion of the application process. I had to write a 600-900-word piece based on an SME interview I conducted with one of their marketing execs. That went very well, and the piece allowed me to advance to the final-round interview, which included one of the hiring managers (who interviewed me), a new key figure in the marketing department, and a consultant who joined us via Teams. The final-round interview was the worst part of the application process. Half of it was based on a DISC assessment they used to gauge your personality to see if you're a good fit for the company. The other half involved the consultant grilling me about best writing practices which I believed I aced. However, the hiring point person and the person in marketing didn't seem to know what they were doing, and the hiring person even admitted so before the meeting started. The whole thing felt like a horrible interrogation, and I withdrew my candidacy for the position after the weekend. When I checked the job board for the company weeks later, lo and behold, they reposted the job post for the content manager position. No one seems to want the job! Or maybe they're not qualified. At any rate, I landed the content manager position at another company around the same time and love my role and the people I work with. Usherwood needs to change its hiring practice or put people in the role who have a good read on candidates and can conduct a proper interview.
