I met the manager of the team while I was in the office interviewing for another role. He gave me his phone number so we could discuss an opening on his team. We engaged in a long, kind of impassioned text exchange where he was trying to get me to claim I wanted to be on his team more than the one I had just interviewed for, and I said I didn’t know anything about his team but would like to find out more.
I was scheduled for an hour long panel interview about 10 days later with the manager, a member of the team, and the recruiter. I was so uncomfortable with the folks in the room laughing about inside jokes, giving each other looks and smirks as I spoke, and gloating about their team. The interview did not have much structure. I’m not sure why the recruiter was there, but at the end of the interview he said he’d be sending over materials to prep for a presentation the next day. The presentation is a mock client meeting where you're trying to secure a renewal with an unhappy recruiting client. I followed up 5 days, then 10 days later, before finally receiving it 3 weeks later, 2 days before I was scheduled to present.
I have my mock client presentation to a panel of 3 of the team’s managers, and while it was pretty clear to everyone I didn’t come from a recruiting background, I’d been told time and time again at LinkedIn that they hire for the person, and skills can be taught, so I was feeling great. At this point I was seriously interested in the company culture and felt like this team would be fun, teach me a lot, and I’d be able to apply the sales skills I have to hit the ground running.
After multiple followups, I finally received a call from the recruiter 3 weeks after the presentation. I was not chosen for the role and told that while I was a great fit for the company, the team did not feel I had a passion for sales or had a strong idea of what I wanted in my next role, based on the fact that I was interviewing for roles in 2 different departments at LinkedIn at the same time. I was pretty disgusted that they would hold this against me while allowing it to happen. He suggested I’d be a better fit for the other department, while ironically in the end, the other department suggested I’d be a better fit for sales. I’ve read so many similar stories on Glassdoor and while I was very drawn to the company culture and friendly people I met, I could not work somewhere this disorganised and apathetic about candidates.