I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 8 weeks. I interviewed at FHLBank San Francisco
Interview
Interview was remote via Zoom with the Senior Director | Financial Reporting Manager and the Director of Accounting Policy. While it was a very nice conversation with focused but not overly-challenging questions presented, it was made clear pretty early on that they needed someone with deep SEC reporting experience, including XBRL experience, given the complexity of the reporting and tight timeline involved in submitting SEC reporting, followed by regulatory reporting.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
They asked what is more important as a component of the 10-K, Notes to the Financial Statements or Management's Discussion and Analysis.
I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at FHLBank San Francisco (San Francisco, CA)
Interview
The interview process was very lengthy and kept extending for almost 2 months. Thought I had met with everyone on the team within the first 2 weeks but they kept adding new people. I met with more than 10 people total over multiple rounds.
After an initial phone screening, three rounds of Zoom meetings were schedule to take place throughout the next day.
The first round was supposed to be with two interviewers, but ended up being just one person reading my resume line by line out loud, starting from experience over 10 years ago… The second interviewer joined about 30 or 40 minutes into this, and was equally unprepared for anything except to say my experience wasn’t the same as theirs, and therefore was I really qualified for this job?
Speaking to managers in the other two rounds it became clear that everyone had different ideas around what the role and responsibilities should be, with one interviewer seemingly wanting a technical expert that already specializes in FHLB members, with another wanting someone to wear a lot of hats and manage multiple projects.
At the end of the day, I could see why this role had been posted for the better part of 6 months, and I doubt it was ever actually filled despite the insincere “we’ve chosen another candidate” response back several weeks later.