I was contacted by an internal recruiter via LinkedIn for the position of SEO Specialist covering one of their regional markets. After a brief phone conversation with that recruiter, centered mostly around what I was working with today and what salary I had in mind, I was booked on a 2nd phone interviewer with a Senior SEO Specialist. The interviewer was 5+ minutes late and didn't apologize. From the start it seemed like a lack of coordination within the organization; I was asked where I was working, although this was clearly stated in my CV, and I was asked with whom I'd talked to earlier--don't recruiters and interviewers talk to each other? The interiewer seemed unprepared and hesitated in the beginning how to start the interview. The interview itself went along fine with basic questions about my SEO work. The response I got gave me the impression that the person wasn't really SEO qualified; the interviewer didn't even seem to know the name of Google AdWords Keyword Planner. I'd done a full SEO site audit of the regional website of Expedia and presented some positive & negative findings--I was met with a curious silence and no feedback. All in all this lasted 1 hour. After a week I was told that the interviewer was "happy" having talked to me, but deemed me overqualified and said they'd preferred to hire me to a senior position. But the job ad was clearly not targeting juniors and I certainly wasn't overqualified for the many requirements they had. Either these guys hype their job ads to attract skilled people for junior positions, or I was interviewed by a person who quickly realized she was not on par with Senior SEO standards. Either way, this was on the whole a baffling, unprofessional recruitment process.

The whole process took 4 months. Generally speaking, everybody was nice but the process was inefficient. Additionally, the 3rd of 4 interviews required a task which I never had to present and was never commented on again which felt like a waste of time.