Working through an outside recruiter I had two phone interviews with my primary contact person and after successfully clearing that step I had a phone interview with the CEO of the recruiting firm. Solid process that gives the ultimate say in who moves forward with the owner of the company. Everything went very well. Great thing about working with a recruiter is that they don't get paid unless a candidate is placed with their client company. To this end I was able to have very candid conversations with both people. I was able to provide the things I was looking for in a company. I expressed reservations to them about private equity ownership of companies (they tend to be profit driven and not people driven), they also tend to require these cognitive/personality assessment tests (in this case a CCAT that is a Pass or Fail score) that in my opinion are a joke. Yes I passed the test. In 20+ years as a sales person, including a director of sales I have NEVER needed to discern patterns, shapes, solve word problems, math problems or any of the other questions asked in order to close ANY sale. What my experience has shown me is that these tests result in cookie cutter people that test well but have weak interpersonal skills. So, needless to say I usually will not interview with companies that do this, I am looking for a company with a culture that values their employees. But just to see if my presumptions were correct I went ahead in this process. The recruiter still felt I would "be a great fit and I could leverage my experience."
Next step was an interview with the direct manager/hiring manager for this position. The first interview was mid-week but a couple days prior was rescheduled by someone within HR. Not a big deal, I again reworked existing appointments to accommodate the manager's schedule, this time 2:30 on a Friday. At 2:18 I received an email that the appointment had to be rescheduled again. I again gave them the benefit of the doubt even though a 12min heads up was in my opinion rude and insensitive to my time. The HR contact emailed me again and asked my schedule for the coming week, We eventually settled on "first thing" Tuesday morning, 8am. So, again I am at my desk, and 8am rolls past, 8:30, 8:45 and finally at 9am I sent an email to the recruiter saying that this is exactly the type of poor people skills I was concerned and that judging from the complete lack of respect I was given I could not see myself working for this company or this manager. 3 days later I have not received any type of personal apology for this unprofessional behavior that was a complete waste of my time.
I realize PS is an engaged company so I can only cringe and laugh that "these tests are best practices of Vista for hiring and interviewing". I am wondering what part of best practices is completely wasting a candidates time and energy? In my career I have never shown the complete lack of respect to a business contact as has been shown to me in this process.