Applied online for a different role and received an automated rejection email, but the email said that I should reach out to a particular person to discuss open content marketing roles at Rippling instead.
I emailed this person, who had spotty communication but ultimately responded and said they thought I could be a good fit for one of their open content marketing roles. We did a screening call and they met with the hiring manager afterwards before letting me know the HM wanted to meet me.
Day of the meeting with the HM comes and they're immediately bizarre. They say hello, are kind of just staring at me, then briefly mute themselves, unmute and tell me they're having a coughing fit and need to go off camera to eat a cough drop, so why don't I just go ahead and kick things off?
They were off camera for a good few minutes and never sounded like they had a cough drop in their mouth or appeared to when they finally turned their camera on again. The entire time, this person seemed low energy, skeptical, and humorless, and just generally not someone you'd be thrilled to have as your manager. There was no enthusiasm for the role or the team from this person. Regardless, the HM and I seemed to be aligned on content; everything they mentioned that the person in this role would be working on, I have extensive experience in.
A few days later, I got a rejection email from someone other than the HM or the person I'd initially dealt with, who just sent a copied-and-pasted form rejection. A bit surprised, given I had all of the experience the role needed and the fact that I seemed to be on the same page as the HM during our discussion, I replied and asked if they could provide some feedback as to what didn't align with the HM's expectations.
Unsurprisingly, I got no reply. I think the HM simply didn't like me on a personal level; they were weird and impersonal and rarely cracked a smile during our conversation, and in general seemed like they were mildly checked out throughout the conversation. And the weird moment of just staring at me when the call started made me feel like they were either sizing me up or judging me on my appearance.
A major red flag came up during these interviews. During my screening call, the person I was speaking with mentioned that there's currently no head of Content Marketing at Rippling, that the person left but "left on good terms." I looked up past content leads at Rippling and could only find one, who left after only a year at the company — two years ago. In the interim, multiple people have added some sort of content title to their job titles (I don't understand why there's more than one person claiming to be some sort of content lead), but there doesn't appear to have been a dedicated Head of Content Marketing/Content Marketing Lead/Director of Content Marketing since 2022. Or if there has, they're buried somewhere in the LinkedIn people results when you try to look up current or past content hires at Rippling.
The fact that turnover seems high for leading this team is not a great sign. The fact that Rippling either never backfilled the role or the backfill didn't last long is an equally bad sign.
I get the sense that I dodged a bullet here. The reviews suggest I may have. My interview experience reinforces that. Trust your gut on this one — if it feels weird, it's likely because it is.
