Recruiter reached out to me via LinkedIn. She was in Australia, but was recruiting for a remote position to be based in the US. We landed on a time and the first conversation was great, very friendly, and the recruiter was excited about my experience and said that she was positive that the hiring manager was going to want to talk to me. She said that they were moving “very fast“ and that they planned to wrap things up in a couple of weeks at the most.
Did not hear from the recruiter at all the next week, so I followed up. It sounded like the hiring manager was traveling (why weren’t they already aware of that when she originally gave me a timeline?) . Later in the next week, heard back from the recruiter. She wanted to “talk to me again as leadership had some more questions“. The second interview lasted another full 30 minutes with the same recruiter. This time the recruiter acted like I did something wrong. It was a very aggressive interview, questioning details of my experience and then re-asking the question a different way. It was so strange…recall that they had reached out to me unsolicited - for a VP/executive role! The recruiter then went on to say that “leadership” was concerned about me not having Global experience. In my discipline, global experience would not make any difference as the math and science of looking at products is how successes derived is not a locally based discipline or one in which you need great knowledge of individual country rules, other than the US, which is their largest market. Then she mentioned things about how it must be hard with “all of the problems in my country“ (I’m in the United States!). It was all very strange. I don’t think they really knew what they were looking for. They went quiet for about another week or two after that and I followed up again. The recruiter replied that again that I didn’t have “international experience“. My current job title is literally one with an international designation and I am over international areas. It was a very odd experience. Maybe they aren’t used to hiring in America? Maybe they aren’t used to hiring VPs? All in all believe that I dodged a bullet.