Marsh Proposal/Strategy Manager Interview

Interview Details The interviews themselves were pretty standard, with the standard questions, beginning with a screening phone interview with HR recruiter (about 30 min), followed 3 weeks later by a 1:1 interiew (1.5 hours) with what would have been the immediate supervisor. This was followed a week later by a morning of 3 separate interviews with higher ups, each lasting about 45 min. That morning they were juggling the 2-3 final job candidates. I followed up all my face to face interviews with handwritten thank you notes.

The 2nd interview was followed by ...... nothing. 6 weeks of nothing. Not a peep. At week 4, I "touched base" with my 1:1 interviewer and was told they hadn't even begun to discuss the finalists. At week 6, I contacted the HR recruiter (again to "touch base"). She called back 2 days later and said they were 'close to a decision". That afternoon I received the no thanks email from the 1:1 interviewer -- "we've decided to go with another candidate."

The whole process took nearly 3 months -- from the initial phone interview to the kiss-off letter . I really wonder, after so much time had passed between interview and decision, whether the interviewers actually remembered anything about the candidates --no one took notes while I was there.

One of the interesting things is that the position had been open since early Sept 2010 and they desparately wanted to bring someone in quickly to relieve the massive workload. At the same time the 1:1 interviewer said he was "extremely picky" about who he interviewed and hired.

My overall impression is that Marsh culture expects its employees to forget having a personal life and concentrate solely on working as many hours as possible. I was told that a normal, average week was 50-55 hours, 60++ when things were busy. Most of the office was a cube farm, with only very senior people having offices, and those were small inside offices (no windows). People seemed nice, but on the whole it didn't seem a congenial place. No one asked for salary expectations throughout the process, and a salary range was never mentioned.