I was recruited to fit a position to assist with service delivery between a contractor group and Petco themselves. I passed initial interviews with the contractor company, they have a large group I would manage and most in India. I was told I’d be perfect for the position, since high levels of technical knowledge wasn’t needed, but I had to meet with the VP from Petco. I went for an in person interview with him and another employee, I knew tensions were high between the groups, it was a jumping into fire position which I had no issue dealing with. What I wasn’t expecting was a blatant sabotage of an interview by the VP himself. After introductions he jumped right into “how are you going to fix these problems?” Since I was given a low level overview of these problems, as much that can be shared to a nonemployee, I answered the methods I take for incident management, tracking, and deescalating issues. He replied “no, how will you stop the calls I get at 3am? How are you going to fix these problems?” I was at a loss for words then had to tell him I wasn’t well versed on this issue, nobody would be at interviewing stages, I haven’t seen the backend of what they’re facing and I’d need to be hired to give actual answers. Also no one should ever give up information for them to use and not hire you and I gave plenty already.
I’ve been in difficult interviews but none were so blatantly repelling. It’s obvious this man did not want me to be the go between, I think he truly wants their partnership to end with the contract company, letting it crash and burn.
I got notified the next day they wanted someone with more programming experience, which we could’ve forgone this terrible interview if he took a once over on my resume.
What I found the most hilarious was I knew the history of where this VP worked last, and they literally shut down their e-commerce website. He absolutely failed and now he’s failing Petco.