After being approached by a Bloomberg representative (we were both attending an academic conference) about an open Law School Relationship Manager position in my state, I expressed my interest and sent her my CV. Three days later, I received an email from one of their recruiters to schedule a phone interview. The initial phone interview with the recruiter was very basic. Since I have roughly ten years of experience working in academia and have worked closely with academic representatives from Lexis and Westlaw, I didn't have many questions myself. The recruiter scheduled a follow-up interview with the national director of law school relations for the next day. The interview with the director lasted approximately thirty minutes, and didn't contain any difficult questions ("Why Bloomberg?" and similar questions). After answering her questions, she gave me a chance to ask some of her. I asked standard fare such as how the training would be performed, hiring time frame, who would be my direct supervisor, etc. It was a pleasant interview, and at the end she informed me she'd like to arrange the chance for me to speak with members of her team who were already working in the field so I could get an idea from them as to their daily duties. We discussed problems other academic vendors were having, as Westlaw had just terminated one-third of their academic representative positions, and she assured me this would not happen at Bloomberg so long as she was in charge. She asked me to send her a list of times I could speak to her team the next week (this was on a Wednesday). Tuesday of the following week, I had not heard back from the director, and decided I should call and make sure she had received my email. She said she had it, but had asked another member of her team to handle the scheduling for the follow-up interview. Later that night, she sent me an email stating there had been some trouble coordinating times with her time due to people being "on the road," but she was hoping to arrange an interview by Friday and would call me the next day to confirm. By Friday, I still had not heard from her. Thinking she must have been very busy, I sent another email listing dates/hours I would be available in the following week. By the next Wednesday, there was still no response, so I sent an email detailing times I would be available in the week to come. Approximately thirty minutes later, I received an email from the recruiter saying I was no longer being considered for the position. I was very confused by the chain of events, particularly since the director had made multiple contacts with me stating she was going to arrange an interview with her team.

Applied online and they were extremly aggressive-three interviews in eight days. First was a phone interview with a recruiter. It went very well and she actually said, "you are everything I could have asked for and more." Second was a phone interview with a woman who ran the whole dept. She was based out of New York, but from my home state and we had a lot to talk about. Both phone interviews were great-very friendly and they asked a lot of questions that I found to be fair and easy. I then met with a woman in Chicago for about 30 to 45 minutes. I thought it went very well, but I heard from the recruiter the next day that I would not be moving on to the fourth interview. The woman's assistant e-mailed me the night before the interview to change the time from noon to 9:00 a.m. I thought it was a bit odd,and I was lucky I checked my e-mail-because I am not one of those people who is constantly plugged in to my e-mail. I think that would have been a bad fit! I asked the recruiter for constructive criticism and was told not to change a thing. Read between the lines that I am too old for the position, but of course, they are not going to say that!