A recruiter sent my resume to the company, and a few days later I was contacted by HR. We set up a date and time for an interview in approximately 2 weeks time. I live about 4 hours away from the site. The week of the interview, HR called and pushed the interview back a week due to key personnel being unavailable. That's fine; these things happen, but I guess they're lucky I'm unemployed and have flexibility.
The interview was intended to have 6 parts: a plant tour and 5 interview sessions lasting an hour each. The interviews were supposed to consist of an HR interview, 3 panel interviews, and a final 1-on-1 session.
The interview started awkwardly: the engineer giving the tour asked how it was going so far and seemed taken aback when I told him he was the first person I had talked to. On the plant tour, I was introduced to some of the people I would be talking to. Most seemed surprised and possibly a bit annoyed that they had to do an interview that day. They told me they were presently dealing with a process upset.
"Alright," I thought to myself, "it's a fast-paced, 24/7 manufacturing environment. I get it; I can roll with the punches."
In the first panel interview, two of the three interviewers were late. This was only a portent for what was to come. The next two turned into 1-on-1's; one guy tried calling his colleague to see if he was going to show up before starting a casual chat about industrial chemical accidents, saying he was happy to work in a part of the chemical industry that had less potential for a major incident. I (somewhat tactlessly) brought up an incident at one of the company's sites that I had discovered while studying for the interview. Hey, he started it.
The final interviewer didn't show up at all. He wasn't there that day.
They told me they would have a decision for me in two weeks. I had to call the third week (after getting no response with an email) to be informed that they had decided not to hire anyone at the moment.
I actually thought the interviews went okay, but looking back I can't be surprised that I didn't get the job considering half the people I was intended to talk to didn't think it was important enough to show up. Now I'm just hoping I get reimbursed for travel expenses. Doesn't really seem worth the time I spent preparing for the interview and traveling.
Message for HR/Management: this is clearly an interview format that does not work for your business, and it makes you seem really unprofessional.
