I had an interview for Applications Engineer within Surveillance Systems. This was field based in England, working from home with up to 50% travel. The interview was via MS Teams. I felt I had great experience that matched the job description and I could offer a lot to the role. I was contacted soon after my application to setup a half hour interview to discuss my career goals, experience and the role.
The interviewer was approximately 5 minutes late to start. The interviewer seemed to struggle to understand my motivations for applying to the role, which was to get back to being more hands on with equipment. The interviewer aggressively hounded me for a salary expectation like a dog with a bone. I tried to rationalise my expectations with my experience and examples from work I have previously done, but the bottom line was aggressively sought with no context being allowed. As usual, I suspect that without taking any rationalisation, and also without sharing ANY indication of hiring budget or compensation structure, my bottom line was probably misunderstood to be salary only instead of full compensation. Without any knowledge of the structure of compensation how can anyone be expected to know what the salary should be? It is impossible. I detest any company who insists on knowing expectations without providing any information of this nature. It was very one sided and unfair.
There was a lot of information about the role and team shared, and to be fair the role and team did sound to be of interest. I had hoped that perhaps the next rounds of interviews would feel much less rushed, but I was not to find that out. I was rejected without explanation. I asked for feedback to help me to improve in the future, but I have since heard nothing despite prompt communication up to that point.
The whole interview felt very rushed. The interviewer was REALLY pushy. I had expected a calm opportunity to learn more about each other, but it felt like pressure was being created, perhaps as some sort of test. I can handle pressure from customers, its my job to do so. But I dont deal too well with simulated or real pressure in a situation where we should equally be feeling out for alignment with each other. I had seen another role within Teledyne to be of interest to me, but after my experience I will not be applying just to repeat that.
