THIS WAS BY FAR THE WORST INTERVIEW PROCESS I HAVE EVER GONE THROUGH. ANYONE SHOULD READ THIS BEFORE EVEN CONSIDERING AN INTERVIEW WITH METTEL.
I applied at MetTel through campus recruiting in the fall of 2016 for a full-time position. I spoke to the head recruiter at an on-campus career fair about full-time opportunities. I received a google calendar invitation for an on-site interview at the MetTel office in New York. The invitation was generic and did not provide much information about the interview format. I went to the interview well dressed and prepared. I first had to fill a generic employment questionnaire —some boxes in the PDF didn't have keyboard input enabled, so you had to fill half of it on the computer, print it, and complete the rest by hand, which, really, shouldn't be a big deal but it is generally very indicative of the lack of structure at MetTel. I was then asked to fill out a personality questionnaire that was clearly not designed for new graduate hires, with most of the question asking about past work experience with questions like: "As a supervisor, I like employees who..." which clearly did not apply to me.
Finally, some employee came to get me for an interview. He clearly did not know anything about me and thought I was interviewing for an internship position. He then asked me for my resume. We walked into a medium open space area where most employees were working in cramped up cubicles. We sat a table in this open space area, right next to other employees working. My interviewer then turned to ask his colleague about what questions he should ask me. I was able to hear the entire conversation and it seemed like neither of them knew what they should do with me. In general, no one seemed even remotely interested in talking to me. After my first interview, I was left to wait on that table, in the middle of the open space while my interview returned to his desk. No one was paying attention to me and no one seemed to know or care what the next step in my interview was. Thankfully, the manager stepped in and called me in his office. We had a good conversation, our non-technical talk was definitely the highlight of my interview experience. After our conversation, I asked him where I should go next and he asked me if I had spoken with human resources employees yet (I had not) and eventually just dismissed me saying the interview was over. I had to ask when I would hear back from them and the manager did not know, he simply said they would get back to me in probably two-three weeks. After a brief 1h 30min total (most of which was questionnaire filling), I was done.
My interview experience was so horrific I emailed them the next day saying I would like to withdraw my candidacy. The workplace itself had a ghostly feel to it, there was no energy and a clear lack of leadership. People working there seemed uninterested and uninteresting. There was a language barrier between my interviewer and I, which ultimately played against me as he could not articulate the technical questions (that he seemed to come up with on the spot) in a straightforward format. For example, "convert a char value to an int" was what he asked me, without mentioning that I should be considering char representation of ints, for example '5' and not just any char like 'a', which also carries an integer value in the ASCII table.
