I was phoned and an interview was set up for Christmas week, a stressful and busy time yet I was glad to have the phone or what I thought would be a preliminary screening. Prior to this, I filled out a lengthy and detailed online questionnaire which included sales type questions and software application knowledge. I had never used the tracking software and was honest about it, but had used so many other custom software packages, I didn't see it as an obstacle so m answer must have gotten me the phone interview.
What surprised me was that the job duties were very similar to my former industry; it was basically a sales job, and I am familiar with attorneys, lawyers and insurance professionals and the interviewing manager joked about the need for marketers since engineers typically do not have sales personalities.
She apologized for calling during the holidays, and I said it was not a problem, expressed my interest and told her that I was interested in the position. I sent a thank you email right away. And I never heard from her again.
When I saw the job posted months later, I called the headquarters in Houston and spoke with HR to let them know that I was still interested and the new HR person said she had just started her job, but she would ask the managers if I could be reinterviewed. No one called.
I got the feeling that the Marketers and HR were a very "young" culture.
I can say that the phone interview was an interview that should have been in person. It was that in-depth and long. I didn't have any questions prepared since this was a couple of days before Christmas and I did the computer screening and simply didn't anticipate being interviewed so thoroughly on the phone, although I thought it went well except that I didn't have questions at the end.