I was headhunted by Qualtrics recruiter through LinkedIn. The first interview was with the hiring manager which was a friendly chat that went very well. I was moved on to the next phase which was a panel interview which has become the norm for roles of this type. I was told that I had to pick a real of fictional scenario and do a 30 min presentation in a role playing situation where they will be the "customer". There were some loose guidelines around the format but the main guideline I was given was that the majority had to be on "live software" - any software. I made up a scenario close to a real customer win I had recently but tailored in a way I was hoping it would resonate more with them. After some introductions, breaking the ice and scene-setting, I started my presentation with an initial slide. 60 seconds in my role playing I was interrupted with a question. I answered and moved on. Of course I was preapred for all sorts of questions and "customer objections" within the role play, that's the way for the interviewer to see how the candidate would react to real world curveballs. I was presenting a topic I had 10+ experience on and was perfectly comfortable and prepared for anything they could throw at me. I was in for a surprise with what was about to follow. I was interrupted with 3 questions in the first 5 minutes, mostly from their principal engineer, before even given a chance to kick off my demo properly. I don't know if that was their way to simulate a "tough" customer meeting orsomething else, but I found it too aggresive, borderline unprofessional behaviour - without however crossing the line. It felt like one of those meetings where a customer have already made up their mind that they don't like your company, there's no way they'll buy from you but they still have to go through that meeting with you as a procurement/tickbox exersize. In any case I carried on like I would have done on a real meeting with a hostile customer by answering politely and accurately whilst moving on with my agenda. A few days later their recruiter called me back and before giving an update she asked how I think it went. I said it was an OK meeting but I felt there was a mis-match in expectations somewhere, but I couldn't tell exactly whare the disconnect had been. She said she had similar feedback from her team and that we coulnd't proceed further. I asked for some more detailed feedback to see where I could have improved or why our expectations didn't align. She promised to get back to me but I never heard a word back. After asking candidates to put in significant effort for a panel presentation it's fair to expect at least some constructive feedback to prepare better for the next one. Taken into consideration Qualtrics are seen as a leader in the customer feedback/experience business you would expect them to have built this into their own internal culture. But that wasn't the case. The feedback company wouldn't give any feedback.

Applied online and was contacted by the recruiter on the phone after a month of applying, without prior notification via email. He started asking the general questions why Qualtrics etc, as well as going through my Résumé and and experiences that dated back over 10+ years. Rather strange to be talking about something that happened that far back. Luckily I wasn't busy to field the call for 45mins and scheduled for a 1st round interview with a member of the team. Had the 1st round with a senior member in the team for an hour, and spoke about the usual . Again questions popped up that went back to my career experience and education that dated back 10+ years. Everyone in the interview process was nice and well organised. Though seemed like a very immature organisation based on the responses I received. The team is also geared towards the younger community that's got roughly 3yrs experience. Don't use the "S" word (survey) during the interview process. Don't put anything in your Résumé, if you don't have detailed memory of it, especially anything that happened over 5+ years ago.