Reed Exhibitions

Application

I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 3 days. I interviewed at Reed Exhibitions (Richmond, London, England) in November 2017.

Interview

Woefully unprofessional. Had an initial phone interview with a senior engineer (I believe) that was promising, and was invited to a face-to-face at their Richmond office. Took an afternoon to go down there (about an hour’s journey). The company shares an office with Not On The Highstreet who seem to own/run the building. The receptionist didn’t have access to the Reed offices but kindly emailed to let them know I had arrived. After 10 minutes she emailed someone else in Reed and let me know she had done so and hopefully someone would be down soon. Later she tried calling (several times I believe) but nobody answered their phone. After half an hour - I think an extremely generous time to wait - I told her I had reached my limit and left. She was extremely embarrassed and apologetic as you might expect - even though she had done everything she could.

20 minutes later I received a call from the Agent who handled the role. He told me the company was blaming the receptionist and she had contacted the wrong people. This was patently a complete lie as she was trying to contact the person due to interview me, with whom she was familiar. When I said that was nonsense the story changed to them blaming the Thoughtworks contractors they had with them not checking their emails, and then again to blaming an existing interview overrunning.

Personally I would not want to work at such an obviously ramshackle, unprofessional and poorly organised company - but if after reading this you think this is the place for you, knock your socks off.

And no, they never apologised for wasting my afternoon.

Interview Questions