I applied on-line about a million times but it wasn't until I found a personal third party connection with the hiring manager before I got any traction at all.
After contacting them directly, I finally had a phone interview about 4 weeks later. Again after several follow up emails. The phone interview went quite well, I really enjoyed it to be honest and was impressed with the hiring manager. I was asked to come in for in person interviews.
These again took several weeks to schedule and then the people I was to meet with was changing up to the NIGHT BEFORE! Fortunately I had read another review and was very intentional about asking for directions to buildings on the campus and gave myself plenty of extra time. That was needed to check in to security, get my badge and then drive to the first building to meet the hiring manager.
That first meeting with the hiring manager went very well. They asked me to work on an exercise that they gave me and we discussed it after I presented it. Again my perception was that things had gone well, the chemistry was positive and we were moving forward.
Next came the HR interview. Aside from wasting about a half hour of my life reviewing details in my resume, it went fine. We eventually got to the timing, salary and if I was pursuing other opportunities. Again no apparent problems or concerns just confirmation that HR was as useless here as in any other large organization I have worked at.
Then they sent me off to another building to meet the hiring manager's boss and the wheels just fell off from there. She was late. She had just gotten back from vacation. She was new to her role. She didn't appear to have read my resume. We began with the "tell me about yourself" and then proceeded to get drilled about why I had an interest in this field, how would I address credibility with the teams I was serving, etc. The sirens were going off and I did my best to pull something out of the nuke that just had hit me. No avail--besides keeping them another 15 minutes with questions, I felt it was effectively over after the first 5 minutes.
I went ahead and sent out email thank yous that day wondering if the hiring manager would want to use up her political capital to keep me in play (BTW no one gave me their business cards even though I asked for them). The only response back was from the hiring manager's boss! Talk about mixed signals.
I waited a whole additional week and finally sent an email to the hiring manager asking them for a status. I wanted another 5 days or so before I got a note back saying the were proceeding with another candidate but if I wanted, I could get in touch with them. No dice on that either. After both an email and phone message I figure that I just am not going to get any utility out of pursuing feedback.
Hope this helps--good luck.
