Interviewing with Base was a breath of fresh air. I am a serious career driven individual and I was tired of all the fluffy BS that typically takes place with startup companies. The team at Base was very upfront with expectations and what the role entailed. I could tell right away this was a serious team. I connected with the hiring manager on Angles List. It was a four step process. There was a phone screen, Google hangouts, skills assessment, then a final interview with CEO. At the time I was located in Atlanta so the whole process was remote. It was clear they were looking for hard working dedicated people who are hungry to be the best. If you are not serious about a career in sales I would probably save your time.

I had a really positive experience initially followed by a bizarre and unprofessional interaction with the CEO which still leaves me perplexed. Step 1: I had a phone interview with the hiring manager, standard stuff asking about background and making sure you're a good fit culturally. Step 2: An onsite with two of the sales managers in their San Francisco office. The two managers (Ryan and Mason) were obviously very passionate about the company, what they want to do and asked some challenging, thought provoking questions doing a really good job to separate Base from their competition for prospective employees. I was impressed with their openness and honesty and at this point quite excited by the prospect of working with their sales team. At the end of the interview we scheduled an onsite to meet with a enterprise team leader for a skills assessment and then the final step before getting an offer would be a "quick chat" with the CEO. Step 3: Initial meeting with their Enterprise team leader was excellent. She was charismatic and honest giving an assessment of the company that wasn't sugar coated. The interview felt like a natural conversation. Then came the "quick chat" with the CEO. At this point I'd been warned by both sales managers and the enterprise team leader that the CEO can be "difficult" to talk to and to not be discouraged if it didn't go well. I brushed this off as him just being tough to interview with. The chat with the CEO quickly went from strange to hostile at a rate of knots and was less of an interview and more of a dressing down. He went from criticizing my experience to accusing me of cooking my numbers at a previous company and saying I'd made poor career decisions in relocating to the bay and working for a start up. He couldn't accept my reasons for leaving a major rival of Base to move to the Bay telling me I'd made a mistake and if I was as good as my numbers suggested they'd never have let me go. He circled back to this on multiple occasions in this 20 minute or so conversation and at times it bordered on confrontational. He asked who else I was interviewing with at the time and made disparaging remarks about the other companies which was strikingly unprofessional. Towards the end of the conversation it got really weird as he started asking inappropriate personal questions; what age I was, where I lived, etc. The CEO behaved so strangely I still struggle to believe that this conversation actually took place. Whatever about deciding someone isn't a fit for the role and saying so the comments he made about my career to date were totally inappropriate. Judging from the other interview reviews I've seen on here my experience wasn't unique. I can understand a CEO wanting to be involved in the hiring process in an early growth phase for a company but when they are as lacking in people skills as he is it can only have a negative impact on hiring. This is a real shame as the sales management team that I spoke to were really inspirational.