I applied on-line. Was contacted via email by a recruiter that requested a phone interview. The phone interview took place a few days later. The recruiter called me later than our agreed upon time. She was totally unprepared and confused. She did not have my resume or the job description in front of her. After looking her up on LinkedIn I found out that she was a junior level recruiter with very little experience and had only been living in the US for less than a year. Her spoken English skills were very rudimentary and undeveloped and her thick accent made it difficult to understand her. She had absolutely no knowledge about the position or the office culture; she wasn’t located in the office where the open position existed, she was located 2000 miles away. She had no knowledge about the discipline regarding the background of the field I work in. The phone interview was unproductive and a total waste of time. It’s unfortunate; I’m sure ZS Associates is a fine company to work for but it makes no sense to have an inexperienced and unknowledgeable recruiter conducting phone interviews with highly experienced and knowledgeable candidates. It’s really not very fair to a qualified applicant to have to be interviewed by an unqualified recruiter. Then to top it all off, she told there would be an in-person interview at the office where the position was located. I sent a thank you email along with requested writing samples and got no response until several days later when I received an automated generic rejection email.

I applied on-line and was contacted by email by a recruiter four weeks later. We scheduled the interview for a specific time and the recruiter ended up calling a half hour late. The recruiters English skills and heavy accent made it very difficult to understand them. Recruiter asked no specific questions about my background and didn’t seem to have any specific knowledge about the position. Recruiter also wasn’t able to answer any questions about the Evanston IL office because they were located in California. Then to my surprise, the recruiter told me they would contact me by email shortly to set up an in-person interview. Within 24 hours I received an automated rejection email.