After applying for the job, it was well over a month before I got a call asking me to interview. I got there on time and was put to work filling out an online resume. They kept me waiting a bit after that...I heard the people near the front office calling back candidates asking for more references. Finally they called me in for an interview with several of their employees. They asked the most adversarial questions I've ever encountered, along the lines of "What if you had plans for the weekend and I came in right before closing time on Friday and said I really needed this document done?" Several of the questions had to do with how I would improve employee morale, so they made it sound like most of the employees were dissatisfied and gossiping.
They said that they would call me I think the next day, saying they moved fast. I tried to keep a straight face, remembering how long it took them to call for the interview. Then they had you do a "test" (Wonderlic test, if you're curious). I test very well so and got a score in at least the 98th percentile (they don't tell you but I saw it written down later).
I knew from the attitudes of some of the people I'd be working with that it wasn't a good fit for me (I've never been to an interview, before or since, where they were so adversarial!). Looking into the finances of Dish Network (and their benefits--the worst I've ever seen) confirmed that it wasn't really a place that I'd like to work, but I wasn't sure if they saw it that way or not. At any rate, I didn't want to lose my unemployment for turning it down, so I had to continue with the process.
HR called me later that day pretty much asking when I could start. They asked me to come in I believe the next day, if not the day after that, to get the drug test paperwork and talk to someone from HR. I asked the HR representative some very pointed questions about the job duties (which didn't sound like it matched the description) and the company's financial status, was given the drug test paperwork, and then went off to get tested.
When I got home, I had a message on my cell phone from well after I left the office from one of my potential bosses, saying he was sorry he'd missed me at the office but could I please come back in for a follow-up interview. From the timing it was painfully obvious that he had spoken with the HR person and had second thoughts about me. I drove back in for the follow-up interview. The interviewer said that he never really got to know me from my initial interview and prodded me to talk about my personal life, give him contact information for my friends and more of my former co-workers and bosses, etc. He also spent a full 5-10 minutes asking me questions about one specific task, trying to get me to guess the answer he wanted me to give him. I don't think I ever got it right. I left the office with the hopeful feeling that maybe they wouldn't extend an offer after all.
That was the last I heard from them until about a month later when I got a postcard in the mail from Echostar saying that they were no longer pursuing my application.
If you would like to work here, see if you can practice for the Wonderlic (I think that's why they called me back in the first place). Also make sure you have excellent references, both professional and personal.
