I've been interviewing pretty regularly over the past year (and aggressively the past 3 months), and compared to previous years, the rate of teams/hiring managers who've taken advantage (or tried) by turning the process into free consultations/work sessions appear to have increased tremendously, leaving me incredibly disappointed at the lack of integrity and professionalism by marketing execs and current state of recruiting in general. There being a larger number of unemployed people / candidates should not be excuse for normalizing this type of unethical behavior. From my experience, the culprits tend to be those who lack hands-on user acquisition/growth (whatever it is called these days) experience, coming from a brand/non-marketing background (which makes me wonder, how the hell did these people get hired into these VP/Head of Growth roles in the first place?) and are pretty deliberate about their intentions. At this point, I'm sick of it and think these people (and companies) should be named and shamed. I'll start my sharing some of recent notable experiences (and I encourage others to share theirs and name/shame the companies, if comfortable, here or elsewhere - just don't do it on Glassdoor since they quit anonymizing posts). Otherwise, thanks for listening to my mini rant :) Uber - 14 interviews over 9 months, across 3 separate cycles for the SAME role/team, first of which I was oddly rushed through the process by a recruiter (that ended up resigning mid cycle) and only consisted of an interview with the 'hiring manager' Ross Petersen, who was ex-TikTok (where I used to work) and only seemingly was interested in venting about his experience there and what TikTok was doing UA strategy side. I found out in future cycles he wasn't even on the performance marketing team in which I was interviewing for (oddly enough), but rather an 'internal McKinsey (consultant)'. In this convo he had revealed that Uber was only running branded search (which means the performance marketing team was doing nothing) for years because they assumed Uber was so 'matured' that there were was no longer an 'addressable market' (pretty bold assumption given Uber's global expansion and the millions to immigrate to the U.S. from non rideshare dominant markets). This turned me off, realizing this would not be a fit (I don't think anyone experienced in UA wants to be twiddling their thumbs in Adwords over a Google Branded search campaign), and the convo ended early/got the rejection email the day later. That same week I learned Uber was amidst another controversy about running a 'Don't Call Me Karen' panel and given the marketing / recruiting leadership team was mostly white females, I figured I dodged a bullet anyway. 2nd Underdog Fantasy - Last Sep their CEO Jeremy Levine emails me buttering me up saying they want me to join as Director of UA over linkedin, connects me with their recruiter, who provided a surprisingly comprehensive overview of their UA operations, which gets me feeling optimistic that this is a strong team. Becaus it's extremely rare that a recruiter (even in-house ones) are prepared to answer any questions / provide any details about UA. - When I meet the hiring manager, Kristen Mitchell (VP of Growth), she skips standard intros and goes into a laundry list of questions she had prepared asking for advice on whether they should run incrementality studies on branded search (such a fundamental topic btw), and asking for a slew of confidential info about Tiktok UA (CPIs, who our partners were, etc) and ended by stating she wasn't actually looking to hire anyone in the next 6 months and when I ask why? she slips up by stating she plans to remain 'closely involved with UA' during this time, meaning she was just using me (and presumably other candidates) to fill in her knowledge/experience gap (even though she's an 'experienced growth marketing director' just no prior mobile UA experience) Touchtunes - The hiring manager was Robert Tompkinson, CMO and 'full stack marketing leader'. I got connected via recruiting agency for a Director of UA role on his team, and after showing up late, unprepared and frazzled, rather than the standard intros, he proceeds to take the conversation directly into an unwarranted consultation on the MMP landscape and which one their team should use (they were using Branch at the time and looking to switch). After bouncing around random topics I am left with no time to ask any questions about UA, team, KPI targets, etc - the only info I got was they 'got millions in the bank'. In my follow up I sent over a few questions to the recruiting agency who was able to get some answers for me, so I decided to give it a go. Following interview was with two senior marketers, one of which was eager to try to get 'marketing ideas/tips' from me which I was able to side step, and let slide b/c the other manager actually did the courtesy of describing her role, past projects and digging into my experience a bit. Hiring manager sends over a case prompt that he put together last minute just before the weekend and asked me to present the following Tue in front of a panel. The prompt asked to go over past work and share 'performance marketing strategies' for Touchtunes with the only context being 'we want to target gen z'. No KPIs/data/etc. Thus I put together a generic strategy deck and some ad ideas. During presentation, no one on the team (product, analytics, other marketers) does the courtesy of introducing themselves or sharing their current projects, nor does hiring manager allow me to ask any questions to him or the team (once again). Him and the other marketers peppering me with questions asking for advice on what channels they should run, how exactly they should build it, etc. Later that week I see via the FB creative ad library that they're coincidentally running many of the exact campaigns that I had come up with in my presentation. I send my follow up thank you and also withdraw, given the experience, and get predictably ghosted with no response. Turns out they've done this to a number of candidates who've shared similar experiences on other company review sites, expected to give them a bunch of ideas on how to grow their business without any proper context. There's more, but these are the ones that stand out for now. Sorry for the long post. Best of luck recruiting in this market everyone. #growth #marketing #recruiting #nameandshame #quitexploitingcandidates
Wow, a true name and shame! Sorry you had these experiences. Seems like marketing hiring managers are totally taking advantage of a tough job market. What was the role you were interviewing for at Uber?
https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/performance-marketing-manager-mobility-paid-channels-at-uber-3794572167 This was originally an L6 Strategy role, then got down graded to L5 (after my 1st rejection) then I was asked to go to L4 over email by the recruiter out of the blue after they had passed me up AGAIN for another candidate (then back tracked and asked me to come in for an on site 'presentation') in which they asked me to give them the world. truly one of the most disjointed and frustrating interview experiences I've had in my life.
That’s super frustrating. Downleveling 2 levels is bizarre. How’s marketing at TikTok / why are you looking to leave?
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