I need to practice being more specific in my writing without being too formal.
Yes this is a great point. I did say I had experience with small firms before but should have really nailed home the point.
Well there is always subjective bias but I can only go by what I was given. This is a huge learning lesson for me.
I mean it’s not bad you made it that far. Just make sure you learn from these experiences. It’s not really learned any other way.
At least you didn’t campaign for over a year, spend countless dollars, had the media and special interest all on your side, and very publically lose the job to someone who has never held a similar role in his entire life.
I can’t imagine that happening to anyone, but if it did, that person should retire from the public and never emerge again!
Misery loves company - here’s my very recent rejection experience.
Company: Small (<25 employees and essentially a 3 person team within my segment), quasi consulting firm within BI
Opportunity: to grow revenue within the state & local governments (3 person team with 18m opportunity set within the next 3 years)
Team: CEO, Co-CEO (Bain/IBM Ex-execus), VP Strategy (Former ERP Exec) , Consultant (25 year old based out of state working remotely)
Interview process (3 in-person interviews, 5-6 calls):
Interview 1: standard 1 hour call with HR (HR is a 1 person team). Built good rapport with her, helped she was an alumni of same college.
Interview 2: In person meeting (3 hours) with CEO, HR, and Hiring manager (Co-CEO). Standard 1 hour devoted to my background, skill set, hour 2 was ad hoc questions, situational questions, white board concepts etc. Hour 3 was mix between compensation arrangements, and conversations around opportunity sets. Overall good experience and left feeling I presented a good image of myself
Interview 3: Mock POC (2 hour presentation, 1 hour lunch with team after). Spent an entire week learning the technology and building a POC (BI & Data Science). Nailed my presentation, CEO said he was going to be proceeding with an offer. Kicked it off really well with VP Strategy.
**During this time I was in daily communication with HR and Consultant. HR was trying to determine my comp package (we agreed on salary but were coming to terms with bonus etc). She sent me Benefit details, company vacation etc. Consultant was there to assist in my POC. With the exception of a few questions, I did my best to exhaust on-line resources before escalating any questions to him.
Post Interview 3: HR said Co-CEO and Consultant would like to have dinner with me. The two of them travel often together and want to ensure I’ll mesh with their dynamic.
Interview 4: 3 hour dinner, Mortons. Steak dinner & wine with my potential team. Co-CEO is typical 50 year old hitting on waitress, coincidentally former Boston guy and competed 5 years in gold gloves. We hit it off given my mma experience, the fact that i live in boston, etc. The consultant and I hit it off too (at least i thought we did). Tho we have different upbringing (he comes from a wealthy family, lacrosse background, heavy on the tech side), we have a lot of commonality in hiking, and overall goals.
Nonetheless, after all that work and positive reviews from the CEOS, I get a call from HR the following day (to note, I gave them a deadline to make me an offer) that the team decided not to fill the role this year given how busy they were and would likely look to hire at the start of the year, 2019. This role was my favorite and I was, to say the least, devastated. I thought I had it in the bag given the CEOs comments and HR’s willingness to send me benefit information. Obviously their sentiment around not filling the role is bs and I chalk up the outcome to something I must have said during dinner and or my dynamic with the younger consultant. Time to reflect and learn.
Sorry to hear that, I agree something happened but it seems really mysterious. Would love to know what happened out of curiosity but doubt you’ll get closure on it. Ah well, their loss, time to move on.
Seriously? Jesus. What was the potential comp package like for this role? mid 6 figures? I’d hope so based on the amount of screening they put you through. Otherwise, sounds like quite a waste of time based on the description.
Thanks man and my thoughts exactly - already on to the next one.
low-mid, but I was negotiating the bonus structure to avoid any potential capping which Im certain played into their decision.
okay that makes sense. It’s tough to tell. Sealing the deal has so many variables at play and one or several that go awry can always leave you wondering what happened. It’s hard to do but don’t go down that rabbit hole. Just know there’s something else out there.
I don’t work in sales so maybe its different, but my experience is to only begin talking pay once you have an offer in hand, then go back with revisions so as to not get the cart before the horse. Some people find it gives off a wrong vibe, like you have the job before you have it.
With a hiring manager, I agree. However, what about an internal recruiter if it is a large company? How do you know you aren’t wasting your time interviewing only to find out in the end you are off by 5 figures or something in comp you are looking for.
Funny you said this though because I did mention comp right off the bat for a product specialist role at VanEck and the recruiter never e-mailed me back to set up a time to speak. Guess the labor market isn’t tight enough or you might have a good point haha
Yeah, I’ve tried to push on comp a few times when I had good reason to believe the pay wasn’t going to be a match. Never got a response, but immediately killed the process. It’s best to just make your own assessment then go forward. If the offer sucks you can always walk away but probing about pay will just halt the process so its generally just not a good idea. That said, HR still always insists on pushing me for salary expectations no matter how much I tell them no and refusal to give a response typically kills it as well. I chalk that one up mostly to HR power trips.
Huh, how dare you ask for more comp for a product specialist (basically Ops) position? There are 50 other people on the line who can do the job.
because I didn’t care and if there were 50 others then why reach out to me in the first place? Seems like there is some flawed logic there.
Because you came through in the same screen as the other 49
obviously, but clearly they short list a hand full of probably 5-7 and only one gets the job. The fact is that my resume is more than likely superior to the other 49 which is why it took HR approximately 24 hours to reach out. I looked at others on LinkedIn with the same title for VanEck, was not impressed with their background so why not bring up comp immediately?
Like BS said, if you really are excited about an opportunity, especially one you probably aren’t good enough for but are getting interest, prove yourself first then bring up money later.
So you got the job?
lol wouldn’t cut your nose off to spite your face. Perhaps you should worry about that portfolio with the hugeee daily vol which is probably been taking a beating the past 5 days instead of posting passing aggressive comments with little to no value