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      Senior SEO EXECUTIVE Interview

      Sep 12, 2022
      Anonymous interview candidate
      London, England
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Trainline (London, England) in Aug 2022

      Interview

      I applied online and the process took over 3 weeks. First, a screening interview with the recruiter, which was OK, typical background questions, projects on which I had worked and my experience. After that, he wanted me to send him examples of my copywriting work, which I did straight away to ease the process. After that, I was told I passed to the next round and 2 days later had an interview with 2 people, including the hiring manager where they asked about my experience, knowledge of SEO and some competency questions. It felt like a conversation and I was comfortable. Told me that I would have to do a case study, which seemed OK. Was expecting maybe a couple of questions and 1 written task. However, a couple of days later I was sent an enormous case study to do as part of the technical task. I was expecting to spend no more than 2 hours doing it, but unfortunately it took far longer. I was rushed by the recruiter to send ASAP that task, even if it required a week of work and lots of research and analysis. Not only that, but I did the case study and 2 days later I had to present it in front of a panel of 3 people. It took me around an hour to explain the 13-pages SEO report I've written and, after that, they started to question almost everything I did. It felt more like an interrogation rather than a conversation, doubting about the ideas and quick wins I suggested to them. I told them how to do a competitive analysis involves business intelligence skills and can be quite time consuming to discover niche and established players in the industry. Instead of appreciating all the effort and exhaustive analysis I did, they seemed not happy with it. For example, I could explain the relevance of niche, long-tail keywords as they're highly transactional and to them, it sounded like I was speaking in another language. I had the feeling they didn't seem happy After the presentation, I thought it was done, but they started with STAR questions which I hadn't prepared at all because I wasn't informed about it by the recruiter and I thought with the 2 previous interviews they could have an idea about my skills and problem-solving abilities. They continued with culture fit questions. I was mentally exhausted, and I wasn't told any of this by the recruiter or the panel. When finished, I asked them when I could have an answer, and they told me that I would be sent another written task if I passed this stage, probably the week after. Excuse me? Another written task when I already sent you examples of my work and wrote a piece of SEO optimised content as part of the case study? I was pretty sure of all the answers I provided during the interview, and they sometimes gave me answers like "that's enough", "ok ok we got it". I thought they understood my answers and was almost sure I had moved on to the next stage. After all that long process, the hours I spent researching, did not hear anything at all. I spent a week waiting for their feedback and heard nothing, so I messaged the recruiter, no response. I did the same with the 3 people from the panel, and those 3 didn't answer to my email either. Complete ghosting. I feel really dissatisfied after the amount of time and energy spent in this process: 3 interviews including a case study and not a word at all. It is really disrespectful. My advice to future candidates is to ask the recruiter how many stages involves the hiring process; why do they need the position to be filled. This job role has been advertised for over a month a half , and they keep posting it every week. I have the feeling the company is using candidates' case studies as a form of free consultancy for their own benefit. Don't waste your time and don't approach these people until they start to value your time and respect candidates' efforts. It seems pretty common according to other opinions here that this company like to waste people's time. It would have been nice to be told that they weren't interested, instead of being ghosted. Furthermore, it was incredibly unprofessional. It reflected a complete imbalance between prospective candidates and employers, and a complete lack of respect for the time of candidates.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Screening interview Competency based questions SEO knowledge
      Answer question
      1