I applied to the Consultant position in Washington, DC in October 2022 and was contacted within two weeks to sit for an initial screening. The screening included 2 management staff members and consisted of a verbal case study in which I had 20 minutes to prepare talking points. Following the case study presentation, they asked a few background and behavioral questions. I asked for feedback on my performance and they noted that my case study was very thoughtful and well presented. I followed up immediately with both interviewers and sent a thank you note. A week and a half later I was invited to sit for a second round interview. This round consisted of 6 individual interviews, the interviewers ranged in professional levels and all, except one, lived either in NY or CA (mind you, I applied to the DC location). These interviews took place over 2 days, 3 hours total, where they each asked behavioral and general questions about my background/experience (so quite a bit of repeating myself).
Before proceeding to this second round, I was asked to complete another assignment, this one written, to be returned within 3-5 business days. The assignment was to read an article and write an executive summary (I was already required to submit a writing sample as part of my application materials but I guess they wanted to test me in real time?). I followed up with each interviewer via email to send thank you notes. I also emailed the recruiter to ask when I could expect to hear about next steps, and never got a response, which I found off-putting as they had been very responsive up until that point.
About 2 weeks later, they emailed me and invited me to sit for a third round, noting that this individual would be someone that I would work with if I were to join the team. At this point, I'm thinking this is overkill, but decide to sit for the interview due to all of the work and time (entire process was 2 months long) I had spent in prepping for each round. The interviewer noted at the top of the interview that the purpose of us meeting was to essentially manage my expectations about workplace culture and exposure (or lack thereof) to certain subject matters. In this case, health equity. I applied to this position because the job description specifically called out wanting an individual who had experience in health equity principles and work. All of my application materials were tailored to this subject, from the resume, cover letter, and writing sample. Additionally, both the verbal case study and writing assignment centered on equity. Throughout the interview, the interviewer consistently stated that transitioning from the healthcare and public health world to consultancy was a hard shift to make and cautioned that there was a high learning curve. My response to her was that I'm ready for the challenge and I proceeded to highlight a few of my past work environments and how conditioned I was to chasing a moving target. Again, following the interview, I sent a thank you note.
A week later I received an email stating that although they found my background to be impressive, they were unable to offer me the position. To say I was disappointed was the least! I'm writing this to let others know to proceed with caution when dealing with this company. I wasn't provided any explanation as to why an offer wasn't extended and frankly, I was too upset to ask because I was constantly reassured throughout the process that they thought very highly of me. I can't imagine that they didn't select me due to lack of experience (I was told that I was an off-cycle hire due to not being a part of a graduating cohort and that they typically hire recent grads with little to no experience for this position), but rather a lack of exposure to health equity projects. For context, I have over 8 years of healthcare experience and a master's degree.
