I recently interviewed with Everytown for my dream job — I am passionate about preventing gun violence and have spent the better part of my 25-year career working toward an opportunity like this. I felt humbled and honored to have the opportunity to interview but also confident that I could provide great value to the organization. I spent several days preparing extensively for the interview. My initial interview was with two people — a member of HR leadership and a senior staffer on the team I’d be leading (which seemed kind of odd, but ok). It was scheduled for 45 minutes by video conference. At the beginning of the call two things immediately became clear: (1) the HR participant knew little to nothing about the position, what it entailed, and what qualifications and characteristics were critical for the role; and (2) the other person on the call — who was the subject-matter expert from the team — had scheduled home repair work at the same time as the interview and was going to be absent or distracted the entire time. The result was the worst interview of my life — it was 25 minutes long and consisted of two half-assed questions from the HR executive — one about whether I had a very specific type of expertise that was just a tiny portion of the role (and easily learnable) and one that was basically just to regurgitate my resume. They barely paid any attention to my answers; seemed totally disinterested and distracted; and made no attempt whatsoever to engage with me — one person literally was not present and the other was not mentally there. Clearly they had barely even bothered to look at my resume (if that) before the call. They did give me a chance to ask questions at the end, but they blew off those questions and just seemed to want to go eat lunch. It was the most disrespectful job interview experience of my life — I get that conflicts come up for people, but I don’t understand why they didn’t just reschedule when that happened rather than effectively blowing off an interview for such an important position in the organization. And their complete and obvious lack of any preparation, interest, engagement, or courtesy was so disheartening and insulting. It’s such a shame because the goals of this organization are so good and so important — but it just does not seem like they care at all.