First step was a call with a recruiter. Second was a call with the hiring manager. Third was an assignment. Was turned down after spending 10 hours putting together a very thorough and professional presentation. What was the reason they gave for not moving forward? After being told the assignment was to see the quality of my work, and given vague assignment instructions that were completely open to interpretation, they said I “missed the mark on what an Upguard user group is.” What? Are you kidding me? You don’t put someone through this process and all the time and effort to turn them down for such a ridiculous excuse. It was a blessing in disguise not get an offer to work for a company like this. I should have known when the first question I was asked by the recruiter was “what do you like to do outside of work? Run, don’t walk away from this company!

I generally take interviews as an opportunity to learn and grow. The lesson from the interview with UpGuard is to watch for red flags. This company does not respect your time or your effort. They also seem to expect you to have knowledge that only a current employee would know. First, red flag is their practice of giving a writing assignment to practically everyone. I’ve been a hiring manager many times and have used writing assignments. It is a very good way to differentiate candidates who are close. UpGuard seems to give them to EVERYONE. Your first interview is with and recruiter who is providing the standard preliminary screening. As long you don’t raise red flags they seem to advance everyone else through to the next interview. But they also give you a writing assignment at that point. The recruiter says that they expect it to take “a few hours”. Well if you are the kind of person who likes to do a good job you are going to put in QUITE a few hours on this. Doing deeper research into the company, reading blog posts, watching product demonstrations and future product announcements, then putting together a presentation, an a memo outlining your strategy and thinking behind the presentation. That’s not a one or two hour effort, that’s a four to eight hour effort. I have no problem with that for candidates who are in a final round, but as a first step this is disrespectful of the time of the people applying, most of whom are not under serious consideration yet. Second red flag is their expectation of your knowledge of their day to day job functions or how they try to gauge that knowledge. I try to learn and grow from interviews, so I always ask what reservations someone may have about me as a candidate. The feedback I got was that I had a good high-level knowledge of what the company does, but it was not detailed enough. I did about 8 hours of research on UpGuard, reading their website and blog, watching their product videos and events, reading reports, case studies and breaches. When I was talking about things I liked about UpGuard the interviewer made the comment that “that’s another team that does that.” So the take away is what? I know about what UpGuard does on a day to day basis but not the Technical Account Management team specifically? Do you expect me to be able to talk about the daily tasks of a Technical Account Manager at UpGuard specifically? I didn’t find the video or blog post titled “a day in the life of a Technical Account Manager”… I think I dodged a bullet on this one. They don’t seem to respect peoples time or effort, which probably extends to their employees. They also don’t seem to understand what they want from candidates or how to ask questions to get to the information that they want.