I applied directly to company via their website. I was contacted 3 weeks later for phone screen by Talent Aquisition Coordinator (TAC). I'm not sure why they need this person, because a different HR member facilitated and participated in the interview. That said, TAC was cordial and following a 1 hour phone screen with her, she enthusiastically recommended me for an engineering phone panel (3 engineers) the same week. The 1 hour panel teleconference was completely disorganized. During the interview I couldn't understand one of the engineers because English was clearly not his native language. Survey says Toefl!
The week after, I found out that I passed their scrutiny and was scheduled for an onsite panel interview followed by a business case analysis and presentation to several of the interviewers for the following week. The TAC informed me that I would receive a link to an online application and a Hogan personality assessment prior to the interview. However, neither arrived. The TAC seemed overworked and stressed. So, I thought this oversight might be due to that. I had to contact the TAC for an interview agenda the day before the interview. Clearly the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing. I arrived early for interview... The receptionist was very friendly...Good sign! However, the building and conference room where the interview was held was excessively opulent like the Taj Mahal, and you had to yell across what seemed like a 30 foot conference table to hear or be heard. My first interview was with the VP Engineering Americas & Director of Residential Engineering. During the interview, both gentlemen seemed disorganized and unprepared...perhaps a bit distant. They seemed to have an old-boy, egotistical country club mindset, stroking each others' egos throughout the discussion. This was further emphasized when the VP made a rude, snide comment about the layout of my resume, which I had been commended on by previous interviewers as well as IR's TAC. I thought this was unnecessarily unprofessional. On the positive side, critical feedback was not going to be a problem with this guy at Ingersoll!
The second hour of the onsite interview was with engineering peers (only one showed up) and HR facilitator. Although friendly, the HR facilitator was right out of school and had just started with IR. It was clear that neither she nor the VP or Director had any formal interview skills training (probably because none of them had a skills-based interview when they were hired by IR). (My wife is a behavioral psychologist and corporate trainer and has spent a number of years teaching skills in selection and placement. I know what to expect, and they didn't roll that way).
Following the second interview, the TAC showed up, introduced herself and provided the business case documents for analysis. I was given 40 minutes to analize the case and was told to prepare a presentation for the group. The HR facilitator returned 60 minutes later and informed me that only one of the audience members would be hearing my presentation, instead of the scheduled group. We waited for this individual for 10 more minutes. After his failure to show decided to proceed with just the HR facilitator as an audience. I considered this VERY rude, but continued through the case presentation, as if I had a auditorium full of attentive participants. When finished I had an awkward, but brief discussion about my case observations and was excorted cordially out to the lobby by the HR coordinator. I contacted them 1 week later about status, and they informed me they were moving on to interview additional candidates.
