SPI Lasers interview questions

Telephone interview and then face-to-face interview. There are two two rounds of face-to-face interview as in the first interview the more senior missed it so I went to 2nd time to meet him.

Primarily telephone screening by the recruiting company, followed by referral and CV submission to the employer. 1st round interviews: - Interview duration 2 x 45 minute sessions - Interview 1 with the CFO, Interview 2 with an HR rep. One-to-ones in each case. 2nd round would have been psychometric testing, with the 3rd round being back to the CFO and meeting other senior managers in the organisation - it wasn't made clear whether this would be by a series of 1-2-1's or a panel interview, nor whether a presentation would be required. Interview style was conversational - CFO focused his time in explaining the company, detailing the specifics of manufacturing different types of lasers - all the stuff you already knew from the research you had carried out. It did not appear that this phase of the interview had any particular structure, as conversation wandered from subject to subject. CFO avoided questions on the foreign operations, despite repeated and varied ways of asking questions - maybe because one location is China and another is Korea - would not answer whether that is N or S !! This was unfortunate, as a reasonable slice of my offering would have encompassed remote (international) system operations along with business continuity planning and disaster recovery. HR interview followed in a similar vein; but a little more questioning about the people skills - they clearly have a disaffected employee who needs handling, as was alluded to at interview, but scant regard paid to my efforts to demonstrate how I have handled this before. I faced no questions or focus on strategy, technical competence, project management skills, budget dimensions etc from previous jobs. Very strange! Feedback from the interview process was amazing - I totally failed to recognise myself ! - apparently I lack vision and dynamism...even though I have been a successful Head of IT or IT Director for nearly 25 years! I was also surprised to hear that there is a strong internal candidate who is also under consideration - not least of all, because it had been made clear that this new position had arisen purely because of the lack of a suitable internal candidate. Personally, I do seriously believe that my lack of progress here was due to ageism....lets just say I'm over 45, and have a CV which demonstrates that I could do this job standing on my head. ...Oh, by the way - don't write a letter of thanks to your interviewer - The recruiter advised that They don't like this "old fashioned stuff" - I'd call it a common courtesy and good manners myself, something that I demand from staff who report to me, and expect from my employers. So on that basis, looks like I dodged a bullet there!