If you've applied for a job with Exxon and was notified by a recruiter/hiring manager that they are interested in conducting a phone or in-person interview, do not get your hopes up and definitely do not go out of your way to make the interview happen. If it can work out in a convenient fashion, go ahead, but don't skip work or engage in hours of preparation for your interview. It's not worth it. Here's why:
- Upper management requires a certain quota of interviews be conducted before they close out a job opening. So hiring managers will continue to contact and set up interviews well after the chosen candidate has taken the job. You might be putting yourself through a lot in preparation for your "opportunity". To them, you're just a box for them to put a checkmark in.
- They conduct both the internal and external hiring phases AT THE SAME TIME. Given that they will select the internal candidate 100% of the time, it makes absolutely no sense to open up the job listing to the public until the internal search has been exhausted. But again, these people do not care about the time and effort you put into your end of the interview process. If they did they would stagger the two job posting phases.
- During your interview they may read off some pre-composed wording about how long the candidate selection process will last, and when you will hear back from them with a response (usually they'll say one or two weeks). They are lying. If you don't get the job, they will not contact you, and you'll just eventually have to figure it out for yourself two to four weeks down the road. Again, you may put time, energy and even sacrifice a few things in order to interview with them at their designated time, and they cannot be bothered with the 0.00001 seconds to send an automated email letting you know they've decided to go in another direction.
This process of "interviewing in bad faith" is common in some other industries, like finance. Fortunately, Exxon is the only company in the Oil&Gas/Energy sector that does this, as most companies recognize it as being needlessly cruel by playing with other peoples' hopes. If you have an interview with them coming up, congratulations. You may indeed get hired. Or you may simply be an unwitting accomplice in the hiring manager's attempt at meeting his quota, and a job offer was never on the table in the first place.
I'm just saying, don't get your hopes up with this company.
