Be prepared for the most frustrating experience imaginable.
Premera's recruiting practices are confusing, horrible and bizarre, and this entire process was the most frustrating experience I have ever had with a company. First off, to be fair there ARE exciting things happening at Premera, and the opportunities do seem promising. When I finally met with the teams internally, I came out feeling like they had a good thing going. The people were genuine and they seemed to enjoy working there. I was very encouraged by that experience, and was intrigued so much that I held off another company’s offer in hopes of getting the job at Premera (I was able to finally secure the other offer, fortunately).
But PLEASE be aware of the multi-layered fiasco that you may end up experiencing with their recruiting teams. Apparently their internal HR is so overworked that they are outsourcing to ManPower the ability to troll through their jobs and candidate base to look for potentially matching positions. This is where it gets really bad. I was personally contacted by 3 separate recruiters – and all 3 were slimy and manipulative, devious masters of the bait-and-switch, willing to fawn all over you in one conversation to win you over to their side, but later prove that they don’t care one bit about you. It was an interminable process. FYI, none of these recruiters are local (one in MN, one in NY, one in Los Angeles). The one from NY was particularly manipulative.
One recruiter squeezed some information out of me (NEVER AGAIN) on an early call, and then a second one later used the info as a tactic to drive down my salary expectations. I was given the general salary range for the position and that I should be able to expect an offer somewhere in the mid-range. Later, I was told I had to have more experience in one specific skillset - and that the hiring manager was too busy and unwilling to speak to me unless I would agree to a lower salary amount. Interestingly enough, questions about that skillset were not once touched on during the real interviews. I believe the recruiter was capping the salary in order to earn themselves a higher commission on the position.
I finally had the onsite interview, which included 3 one-hour panel sessions. One of those sessions included the hiring manager. I was told that if the first 3 hours went well, then I should expect to stick around to meet with two executives. The panel interviews were great. This is when I finally met the team members and found out more about the actual job. The panelists were very smart, asked engaging questions, and showed excitement about what they were doing. I enjoyed my time there. At the end I asked about the two follow-ups but nobody knew anything about it. HR and the hiring manager was nowhere to be found.
When following up with the recruiter, she fawned all over me telling me how wonderful the interviews went and that they had to now schedule the time with the executives “just as a formality”. Then she explained that scheduling them was going to be tough – “It’s going to delay things further because they are out of state”. Then the next day I was told they are “flying them in to meet with me” and “I should feel lucky” that they were going to all this trouble. Really? It was just more buttering up to keep me engaged (they knew I had another offer). So, I went in and had two very pleasant half hour conversations with two executives. At the end of that interview, they could not tell me what the next steps would be, other than to “just wait for HR”.
I did wait, and after 4-5 days, there was no communication at all. I had to initiate a call to get a status update. That’s when I was finally told that they were not moving forward with me. And here’s the kicker -- there was absolutely no feedback as to WHY I wasn’t selected. None. I’ve even reached out to the hiring manager, but received no communication. Even better, they had made the decision at least two days earlier. Why bother to tell me this, right? I guess she had no incentive to work with me further or to communicate to me any negative information – because at that stage she had no hope of getting a commission … so why bother, right?
Believe me, this was truly a one of a kind experience for me. I’ve been on the hiring side for many years, and I thought I had pretty much seen it all until going through this fiasco. DO NOT work with the Premera recruiters if you can avoid them.
