Truly Awful Interview Experience

I've been a visual designer for more than twenty years, and a creative my entire life. Yesterday I had one of the worst interview experiences in my career.

The location was a pretty prestigious one, and I was excited to see the office. Housed in a very large building on the Mag Mile in Chicago, I approached building security to check in for my visit. It took more than ten minutes for the security desk, my personal recruiter, and the representatives from the agency in question to synch up and determine that, yes, I was actually keeping an appointment.

That aside, I arrive at the office and immediately feel like this would be a move in an upward direction. Everything about it said "professional agency work." It was heartening. When I was greeted by one of my interviewers, my confidence was bolstered. He was immediately friendly and took me on a short tour through the space.

Then we came to the office where everything just kind of....died.

With my current employer, when we prepare to review a candidate's portfolio, that candidate has time to create a slideshow. We reserve a conference room with large television screens and most of our design team is present to review the work and ask questions. We have a "design-first" team and we take that approach very seriously.

And here I was, in this lofty office, being asked to spin my Macbook around so these two men could squint in the glare coming through the window behind them and supposedly assess the content I was sharing with them.

Now keep in mind that I had already spent many hours putting together a solid Keynote because, based on my impression of their website and client list, they'd be the kind of agency expecting to see this. But my recruiter told me that this was unnecessary. She said that everyone there was already familiar with my work and quite impressed by it.

Were that the case the feeling had completely changed for some reason. The two men before me could not have behaved any less interested. In fact, one of them just up and left halfway through the interview. The remaining gentlemen merely sat in his chair, the very picture of impenetrable stoicism.

At the opportunity to ask more about the agency, I rolled out some pretty standard lobs. I asked what their ambitions were in the near and far term, what client list this new designer would be handling. I also asked what the lifetime of a campaign looks like. I got very few specifics, and a lot of perspective from 10,000 feet above.

And because I knew that I was totally blowing it, I started having a very hard time focusing and I could tell the sweat was beading on my forehead.

When I left I called the recruiter and let her know that the advising against a Keynote was not a good idea there. Had I at least had that, I would have had some kind of structure to walk through. I also let her know that they seemed not to know me or any of my work at all. To this she replied that, just the night before, they had drinks together and discussed my work and experience at length.

Odd thing is, both of my interviewers informed me at the top of things that they have JUST arrived from New York.

Who knows what to make of it but, in the future, I will not waste my time in an interview if I cannot even present my work properly.

Great design resource

100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter) Submitted June 14, 2019 at 06:14PM by mw_mills http://bit.ly/2wU7viK