Contacted by HR via phone about 2 weeks after submitting application from public job board (careerbuilder, craigslist etc). HR person was pleasant and focused most questions on the typical 'what has been your biggest challenge and how did you overcome this?"....
Personally I do not think these questions tell the HR person anything real, they may be better off asking a co-worker of the candidate but I realize they must throw a dart.
I had intimate knowledge of the products they sell as a distributor since I participated in the design of the products at their supplier (Datalogic) while in a past technical sales engineer position.
The phone conversation was fine and I was told I would be contacted by someone else a week later since the hiring manager was travelling. This did take place as mentioned and I was called by someone names Michael, not the hiring manager but someone helping out...could be the CEO for all I know....
This call did not go as normal, by normal I mean back and forth open discussion, the call went like this, and started with the person sounding distracted and after saying hello 'so you sent a resume in, and what school did you go to? Ok so ya I see a degree here and ok well we sell "x' and have a couple territories open, I am looking at your resume and your doing "x" work right now...ok well I am going to be in town and talking to some candidates and will call you with details".
My guess is he was checking email or working on some other items at the time, no real interest in asking questions just seemed to be "checking the box".....or going through the motions, oh well, I figured I would go along if he called back.
He did call back and meeting was set at a Starbucks. We met as planned and he wanted to go to another location across the parking lot, no big deal.
SO I will answer the question below but all this person did was go to my high school experience and classes taken.......keep in mind I am not a 22 year old, I have been in Outside technical sales, applications engineering, inside sales, inside sales manager, outside sales manager, general manager and regional sales manager positions. Income of 135k-185k for 20 years plus, highly technical roles requiring BSEE/MSEE......but this guy asked me what Science classes I took in high school in the late 70s because 'we have some technical products"....really? Its just a barcode scanner....
He wanted to know each job held not on the resume covering 10 years, who I reported to, if the company was in business, where the manager was, location of business, if they had moved, each and every company.....from 1985-2003......products they sold (which were highly technical)....
Huge waste of time, the person I met with did not know what "PNW" meant (Pacific North West) or "POS" (Point of Sale) or that $6kk meant 6,000,000 dollars.
All of that is fine, but when you start questioning why someone can not remember details of the exact science class they took in 1978...time to hope the interview ends soon, what a waste of time.....
Worst interview experience ever. I have hired dozens of sales persons, no one would ever work for me if I treated them this way......
Withdrawing application......
