After applying for this company many times, a recruiter emailed me saying that she wanted to conduct a phone interview next week. That next day, she emailed me again and said it changed. She said be prepared to discuss our products and their value proposition. I spent about 2 hours preparing. During the call, she went over briefly about the job. Basically its cold/warm calling sales. You sit behind Salesforce.com and make 10-30 calls per day trying to get a client to do an online demo. After she explained to me about the job; which was very basic, she asked about me for about 3 minutes. She really didn't care too much about my past performance or who I was, more about how good I am at closing deals. Having my MBA I figured that a sales job their would get my feet wet so I could move into a different division. She described that the process role playing in which I had to call her voice mail within the next 24 hours and pitch 3 sales pitches to get her to call me back and move on to the next step. At first I thought this was a creative way to interview; but just wait.... I got a email back saying that I passed and she liked my voicemail. She said I was the best candidate for the position so far. She then took the role playing to say
", VP of Online Marketing at Fry’s, and I'm glad you've been corresponding with my team. They've presented some basics on Bazaarvoice and at this time we're not going to pursue setting up a meeting with your sales director because I'm concerned about negative reviews and about the total ROI of the solution. I don't think that it will drive any real value for us. Thanks for your hard work. We'll call you back when we're interested. Take care, " so I responded with an email and a phone call which got me to the next step. Here is where it hit the fan. The recruiter said I would be talking to the VP of ECommerce, actually I talked to a lady was not at the VP level. I prepared to take to a VP talking about ROI, not trying to describe our products and how they can be uploaded to facebook! No VP cares about that, they want to know ROI. Basically all said and done, i asked to when I could present an online demo, she gave me excuses after excuses which I was prepared for. I said I would call her again when she gets back into the office to set up an online demo. basically they take the whole roll playing thing way to far. They are looking for used car salespeople that continually pressure people into doing an online demo. I mean, I have an MBA and am employed, I have learned that that tactic can't be applied to selling somebody into a $125,000 investment. You have to show them respect and build a relationship. After the roll playing was over, all they care about is if you can close a deal; or telling them that I will set you up for an demo for Monday... I mean in the real world if a salesman told me that I have to do a demo after I told him no, I will never want to talk to them again. I believe they use this tactic a lot, but they must be loosing a lot of opportunity from their cheerleader like salespeople. I think they miss out on a lot of prime talent because all there looking for is sales people that can close deals, which takes a lot from an applicant because like any good organization you train you on their approaches and best practices. All in all, they might be a great company to work for but their interview process does not show case a persons abilities and performance, which they don't care about. Its about $35,000 per year with bonuses up to $75,000. I just thing they take the role playing idea way too far. They never wanted to get to know me nor my performance, just if I could role play and make a sale. Not to worry, I have accepted an offer at Google.