The whole interview was badly organized.
In the morning, the hiring manager was late. I had to wait for her more than 20 minutes in the lobby. She didn’t even apologize.
I interviewed with 17 people. The interviewers didn’t even know what to ask me. Mostly, it was a general discussion but it wasn’t boring.
During my presentation, most of the attendances were sleeping and none seem to understand what I was talking about. I won several awards for this presentation, so I knew that it’s not my performance.
At this point, I just wanted to stop my presentation and leave, but I had to continue. I traveled 6 hours to do this interview. The Hiring manager didn’t even know how to pronounce the title of my presentation.
Weirdest part: When she knew that I have a Middle East background, her face changed and she wanted to know my religion. She started talking about Christmas vacation and family… waiting for me to comment. Like seriously it’s only July and mentioning Christmas from nowhere!!! I said maybe I am wrong and it’s just a hallucination. But then her colleague started asking me about what kind of meat I prefer (referring to Pork), I just wanted to laugh. She thought I was a Muslim and clearly she didn’t like that. This was completely ridiculous in a job interview. Despite that I am Christian, I kept quiet and I knew that I am completely in the wrong place and I just wanted to go back to the Hotel, to relax and forget about this terrible experience.
The end of the day, I had to go for a dinner. One director didn’t show up and didn’t even apologize. (Too much respect indeed).
The next day, I had to do a tour in the area. I asked the lady to make it short, and I explained to her that I won’t join this team and will stay in my current job. She was respectful, understandable, and fun to talk with.
The hotel was nice and the food was GREAT.
I am pretty sure that my experience is exceptional, and it could be limited to this HR in this department precisely. A big pharmaceutical company like Amgen should respect a little bit more their candidates and have better organization skills and formal interviews.
The whole process took around 3 months.
Good luck.