Dateline: aughts & teens. The market research industry is a pseudo-science which I'll tackle separately here someday in thrilling detail. MR is filled with washouts from other legit industries who looked around & realized they could make a decent living simply being punctual & polite. There are also legit smart folks in MR, I met a handful. They & I were smart enough to slurp up the gravy train. Which I did, for 20 years. Let's focus.
Ann Arbor, MI.
Flown there twice, 5 years apart. Multiple MR sales ppl I know have interviewed here or been asked to. Must have hard time hiring or keeping them. We share similar stories of our visits. This unique shop is home of the spectacularly annoying popup surveys all over the webs. They claim all sorts of perks with their surveys: customer loyalty, competitor threats, yadda yadda. My 1st visit went well enough to talk about working there, the pay package (it sucked) etc. But here's the rub: they only offered 1 week vacation your 1st year. That was bullshit & I told them that, in nicer words. 1 fucking week vacation? That alone was a walkaway for me, and I told the Sr Exec 'closer' that, to her face. They wouldn't budge on it & neither would I. That was that. So 5 years later guess they forgot about it as a recruiter asked me to interview there. I said sure why not. Another waste of time mistake. This time, the candidates had to analyze a company of our choosing to do a role-playing presentation. I loathe those. Should have put the brakes on right there. For some reason I chose this company to analyze, talk about competitors, opportunities, etc. Guess my choice didn't go over well as their head of sales walked out of the room during it. But still, they wanted me to work there, talked salary, etc. They had bumped vaca up to 2 weeks. Wow.
So, here's the kicker. Both trips, 5 years apart, had the same problem afterwards: reimbursing me for the flight & hotel. The deal was: I pay my own way, submit the expense report, they send a check. Standard stuff. Ok. Both trips, took 5 months to reimburse me. Nothing but excuses when I called them. Five. Fucking. Months ...twice.
Wayne, PA.
Recruiter called me out of the blue, talking about this opportunity. They did closed captioning for tv shows, live news, etc. And they said business was booming. Needed another client facing accounts guy to hunt for new business. For market research they did survey comment transcriptions. Stop me when this gets too exciting. So anyhoots I fly into Philadelphia, rent a car, drive to Wayne. I recall it's a long drive, a couple hours maybe. Wayne is out there, not near a big metro. So anyhoots I get the tour, and several rounds of interviews with various teams. Then the CEO and the #2 took me to lunch. During which they just talked business with each other. Ignored me. I had the feeling they already dug another candidate, which was indeed the case. The gig required moving to Wayne btw. It paid alot, over $100k, but still risky if it didn't work out etc. Plus: Wayne?
So, here's the kicker. The recruiter called me back not even a month later. Asked me if I was still interested. I said what's going on. He said they hired their top choice who didn't last 2 weeks. I said thanks but no thanks.
Cincinatti, OH.
Another doozy. Recruiter connected me to their new head of sales, guy named Patrick. Good guy, we got along well. Company did transcriptions for survey comments and other verbal submissions from call centers. Patrick confidentially briefed me on 2 key folks, the owner & the one other sales guy. Said the owner never had a hangover in his life, was how he put it. Basically, the guy was a straight edge, no fun, no personality. It happens. No crime. The other was the sales guy named Rudy, been there forever. Said in a roundabout way he's not a Rudy fan. There were 3 other principals I sat with separately. 3 overweight older white guys in cheap dress shirts. Fine chats, no idea what they did as their software did the actual work, but anyhoots.
So when I sat with Rudy, here's what happened. I said hi or whatever, and Rudy proceeded to talk, nonstop for 45 minutes. Never asked me a single question. It was like watching a pinball machine, bouncing from topic to topic, no point, no reason, no nothing. The one thing I remember from this other than staring at him thinking what the fuck is this guy doing was him talking about windmills. On & on & on about windmills.
We went to lunch nearby with Patrick & the owner. The owner stared at me with laser beam eyes peppering me with questions. I kept thinking about Rudy, specifically why not go ask him these questions? You have a social misfit as your only sales guy. Now I knew why Patrick didn't dig Rudy. Patrick was a smart accomplished tech sales guy, inheriting a joke of a sales guy who was part of the family business. Bummer for him. No real kicker other than I kept in touch with Patrick a bit afterwards so I could connect with him wherever his next stop would be. He lasted at this place 3 more months before splitting for greener pastures.
NYC, the big apple
At the airport some guy approached me offering ride into the city. For whatever reason I accepted. Went fine, cost $60. Prolly not a safe idea but he dropped me where I needed to be no problem. Somewhere in the heart of the city I met the crew, typical small MR firm with interesting homegrown software. They def had traction in the market though. Don't recall much about it other than the head of sales was named Drew & I thought this is a long trip you're paying for we could have done over skype.
LA, SoCal
Same firm I worked at several years later after a shitshow stop. But this was early, I would have been the 10th employee. They def wanted to hire me. Great folks. Great owners. Should have accepted. Instead worked at Paris based co where 2 of my former bosses joined, & they recruited me. Hard to say no to that. Lasted there 3 years. What a clusterfuck that place was. Will write about that separately, which includes my first & last trip to Paris. At a conference a few years into that place I talked to a sales rep, told him to float my interest, hoping door was still open. It was. I wrote about that separately already. Let's focus.
Daytona Beach, FL
My only pleasant recollection, other than being in Florida, the vilest state in the country. Andrew picked me up at airport & we drove a half hour along the ocean to an elevated open-air diner on stilts and talked for a couple hours. He drank, I ate. Very cool guy. We kept in touch for years. He wanted to hire me & would have until his HR ppl caught wind of this.
Mpls, MN
Some fancy consulting firm, snazzy 2 story downtown office. I spent hours there, at least 4. Their candidates had to do a simulated paper crush exercise. Put me alone in a room for 45 minutes where I had to review 8 separate detailed memos and communication threads. Then I had to create a PowerPoint presentation and present to an actual audience what my strategy would be. I had 45 minutes to both study & create a presentation. This one was tough but interesting. I did it, 7 office drones filed in & watched me present my on-the-fly strategy. It went well, I think. They all threw questions at me. At the end of the visit they took me on an office tour, both floors. Took that as a good sign. Speaking of signs, walking through the cubicles I saw a nametag I recognized in an empty. Caroline. Fucksticks. I had worked with her nasty ass personality 15 years earlier. Here I made the mistake of saying oh I know her. Whatever chance I had of being hired ended when they surely ran my name past her later. In hindsight though, I wouldn't have wanted to be in the same general area as her.
Skipped 2 separate interviews in CT, years apart. One with the notorious industry weirdo JJ. Another at a firm insisting on, wait for it, role play presentation. 2 more in Winston-Salem, those got weird. I'll pad those out.
Winston-Salem. No flights as I was living there at the time. Hustled my way into both places using my sales skills. One firm there is weirdly large, they do newspaper insert adverts. I learned it's a big biz with all kinds of analytics behind it, go figure. Talked to the analytics team for an hour, 4 of them, went well. They wanted to hire me but didn't have opening. That's what she said. In parallel I was chatting with a high level exec there, C level. She invited me in to give a mobile research primer to them & some other folks. About 10 showed up. There was a cluster getting me on wifi that wasted 10 of my 30 minutes, getting a tech into the room to set me up. So when I started talking it becomes clear to me that the exec apparently gave zero prep on my visit. She just scheduled a meeting in the room. That's all she did. Never told me. Never talked to her again after that. I could tell people had little idea what I was showing them. No crime, but what a weird waste of their time.
The other Winston-Salem visit was a MR firm there. I hustled my way into C level presentation. Went great. The head of HR talked walked me out & expressed interest in taking to next steps. That involved having a lunch with their top strategy guy who wasn't in the meeting. So he & I later went to lunch. Older guy, white shirt, white hair, not from the industry. Was going dandy until I mentioned I was a member of the local cycling club that clogged his evening commute home in the country. Literally at that second I could see it fall apart. He hated them. He actually said 'I hate those cyclists.' And that was that. He hated the cyclist club that I belonged to that I never heard from him or them again.
Sidebar: an industry buddy of mine, 3 years later, interviewed there. Senior guy. Dean knew I lived in the city so rang me up for advice. I said good luck, told him my story. Later he told me they flew him in, winded & dined him, then went completely dark. Ghosted him. He was fairly pissed about it, the rudeness. Yup, check. Fucking rude shop.
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I had loads of fucktard interviews in my teens & 20s, haven't we all? You thinking about yours? Not gonna write about them, too universal. Everyone has theirs. What's yours?