You know how dreamy it feels when you’re fifteen minutes into an interview and you’re being asked every question—in the exact wording and spirit—that you had ever hoped for? When it’s as if the questions were customized for you and designed to showcase your greatest strengths? And you are answering perfectly, succinctly, with grace and thought and ease? You’re enjoying good rapport with your interviewers, including moments of positive laughter between all parties. It’s magical, until deeper into the interview you realize the tone of the leader has confusingly changed, and you sense she has become threatened by you. This is what happened to me when I interviewed with NoMa BID. She asked her next questions with an undercurrent of skepticism and went to negative places fast. She had started the interview by declaring a statement that this COO role would not be making organizational decisions or shaping policy (“Is this clear?”) and now the larger picture was coming into sharp focus for me. She did not want anyone or anything to threaten her post on the roost. She had hired a consultant to help with the process, but the experience was unprofessional and disorganized from the start: after I had applied for the role I received a message that they may want to have further conversation with me. Then after two days, an email that I was no longer being considered for the role. And in another two business days, a third message came that they would love to have me for an interview. All that, of course, as long as I could fit into the exact time slot and day of their choosing. What a sloppy and one-sided mess. The leader was also untruthful with me during the interview. I asked how the COO role became available, and she responded that it was a new position. Anyone can pull up their 990 tax statements, or conduct a quick search on LinkedIn, and easily find the name of a person they had employed as their COO just as recently as last year, who seems to have mysteriously left the post. I had been warned, and had read in op-ed pieces, to be wary of this group. Those remarks were that it was run by crooks and lawyers; people who were doing less-than-good things, but trying their hardest to look effervescent and jovial and playful. My experience interviewing with NoMa BID reflected those earlier remarks. It was terrible.