I also was led to believe the door was wide open. They will even discuss compensation with you, which no one does unless they are ready to make an offer. My experience is the Midwest HR senior management are young, supercilious and lack broad experience. If you look at HR senior partners "Oprah Show HR Background", he appears to be the top-down problem. Very disconnected. This person is not even a HR consulting professional and has a bachelors degree in secondary education. His HR / recruiting team reflects it.