I applied for an AE role. A UPS corporate talent acquisition recruiter reached out to discuss the role. Clearly, her mission was to weed out anybody who was unwilling to accept their salary AND those that did not follow “the challenger sale” model. The next step, was to take a 3-part assessment. Assessments can be good -- I sold talent management tools at a prior company, so I understand the good and bad, but geez, with their assessment, you would have thought you were applying for a much more challenging and technical position than an account exec. They use CEB’s online assessment tools, and in this case, it consisted of three parts, including timed, 18 question story problems – which could have been easily answered; however, the challenge – answer all of them in 20 minutes. Typical deductive and mathematical questions, requiring you to eliminate non-useful information, do calculations, and use reasoning to derive an answer. Easy without being timed, but much more difficult when have to answer ALL of them in 20 minutes. They gave five sample problems and in the instructions, they tell you that it’s going to be hard. Again, I’m scratching my head wondering what role I’m applying for. Another part of the assessment had 70 questions, each with 3-4 statements each. From the statements, you needed to select the one that best describes you. The focus is clearly on answering in a way that meets the criteria, characteristics, and persona of a “challenger model” sales rep. Easy enough, but again, 70 questions? At the start of the test, the instructions indicated you would need 55 minutes to complete; I spent about 90 minutes and estimated that to do a thorough job, you would need at least that to 75-100 minutes to complete. By the way, I used the challenger sales model previously, selling technology and complicated systems and tools. It works fairly well when the sale is complex and there is value when you can show the client game changing ideas and/or a new value prop. However, we’re talking about selling freight services. My intuition tells me that selling freight services is not at the same caliber or complexity as selling high tech solutions. I’m not saying that it’s not difficult, but it certainly made me wonder. After taking the assessment, I received an email from the recruiter indicating that I had passed. I was told that someone from the area team would be in contact with me on next steps within 3-5 days. Five days went by, and no word from anyone--no phone call, no email. So, as any good sales rep would do, I reached back out to inquire about the lack of follow through. I finally received an email from the hiring manager: “I want to thank you for your interest in UPS Freight and the FSAE position in (city, state). Unfortunately we have decided to move forward with other candidates. Thank you again for time.” No explanation, just a banal email saying thanks, but no thanks. Obviously the recruiting and the hiring manager were not on the same page. As an individual with experience and success in making sales objectives and meeting the criteria they established in their job post, it boggles my mind as to why I didn’t get an interview from the hiring manager. I’ve always tried to operate under the guidance that people’s time is valuable. Looking for a new position requires an investment of time, and sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn’t. But when you pass the “screener”, pass the assessment, and then get turned down before you are given an opportunity to connect, that says something about the company, their process, and the hiring manager. The whole process was rather irritating, and somewhat unprofessional, to say the least.