Step 1: Informal interview with recruitment agent - Good, informative
Step 2: Hour long zoom call with an employee of 20 years at head office -
Seemed fine at the time but was asked how old I was which I found to be a red flag afterwards. They didn't ask me much about my experience but talked a lot about the company and what would be expected of you (basically to not think about leaving any time soon, mentioned for example that 3 years is no time at all to stay in a company) I was enthusiastic about all they were offering despite the red flags. A lot was being asked of this role (training secondment for up to 1 year at head office in France, it seemed they were looking for someone who didn't necessarily have a marketing background but who spoke perfect fluent French and lived local to the UK office, someone who they could mold to their standards of marketing but also wanted someone seemingly quite advanced in their career in terms of maturity and commitment to a company, who was free enough of personal commitments to be able to relocate to France for one year for training but then also be local to the UK office and want to stay in the company for a long long time.) The person at head office even stressed that after the year in France was up there would be no chance to stay at head office as they expect this role to be fulfilled from the UK office, so don't get comfortable in France.
Step 3: Zoom call / online test with employee at UK office that lasted 3 hours. I had been told about this test from the word go. The man was 15 minutes late to the call so not a great start. During this call i was supervised doing a series of logical reasoning tests and a 300 question personality tests in which some of the questions were frankly bizarre (if i enjoy love scenes in movies, or prefer bearded of non bearded men!)
One of the tests was on French language interpretation- I grew up in France and cannot stress enough how i speak it to a mother tongue standard, from the nuances and colloquialisms, and i can guarantee you the level of riddle worthy French sayings they were asking you to interpret would stump even actual French people.
I left this test feeling frustrated to have spend 8am-11am being put through that level of mental scrutiny for such a role despite the low level of experience they said were looking for.
The same day i heard from the recruiter that i was unsuccessful with 0 feedback. I explained how invasive this whole interview process had been and asked for feedback. She eventually was able to forward me 'feedback' from the female employee in France who i spoke to on zoom. This consisted of a sharp email of purely my test scores with no elaboration, and that they didn't even check the final personability quiz of 300 questions as i hadn't met the criteria. Considering we spent an hour on zoom having a conversation i would have expected a little more character feedback and some positives at least, but it was more like a disgruntled teacher sending me my grades. As someone who has got by well in jobs the whole process knocked my confidence and i wish i hadn't entertained this role.
I felt like with my fluent knowledge of the French language and culture, my career background and willingness to move i would have been as asset to this company and it all felt very promising until this bizarre test. It felt to me like they are far too reliant upon a stringent set of logical skills with no regard for any other kind of way of working or thinking. I felt like they were asking for a dancing monkey and are valuing some pretty outdated things and would absolutely kill any individuality or creative abilities of whoever they eventually hire. In the end i was truly relieved to have not been offered the job as it felt like i would have been entering some sort of cult. Lots of family members working for the company too which i always think is a red flag.
The recruiter an i exchanged some emails after this and she explained she shared my feelings and that they had been really struggling to fill this role, that not many people had met their criteria and to not lose hope because of this experience, this was both a relief and a further blow. Good luck to them with whatever they are looking for, i think whoever gets the role is headed towards a nervous breakdown.