I had an interview recently with a huge multinational corporation. Had the standard phone screen and got passed up the chain until I had an interview with the General Counsel for the Americas and Asia. It was a very interesting interview primarily because the corporation was a European based corp, the counsel I was talking to was in S. America, and I would have been working remotely but based in a state across the country on paper.
The interview went fantastic. In truth, I haven’t had an interview like this in forever… if ever. The two of us seemed to hit it off instantly and we were both bouncing around conversation topics, both professional and some personal related, with extreme ease. Our conversation was so interesting that we blew through the interview time and talked a fair bit longer and had to reconnect with another zoom call to keep going. Eventually, another appointment intruded and the GC had to finally go, but they specifically mentioned it was one of the highlights of interviewing that they’ve had. And it definitely was for me as well.
I sent along a very thought out thank you note and a few days later I got a phone call from HR. I had technically applied for 2 positions with the company. One as a Sr. Counsel and one as Lit Management attorney. HR called me up a few days after the interview with the GC to tell me that they were going to remove me from the applicant pool of the Sr. Counsel position… and that I might get a notification that I was rejected, but to ignore it as that was just how their system worked.
Now, to me… that seems like a very good sign. I was being removed from the applicant pool of one job, one might assume because they were planning on hiring me for the other one. Right? Stands to reason.
Well we would both be wrong apparently. A couple weeks later I got an email rejecting me for the Sr. Counsel position, and then another email a handful of minutes later rejecting me from the Lit Management Counsel position as well. I’m not really sure what happened, but it seemed like I had the job and then somehow behind the scenes, it was taken away from me. Sorta sucks. The company sounded fantastic to work for.