Future interview questions

It was a basic informal quick 20 minute interview with people from different departments. It was harder to ask in depth questions about the position as they were from different departments.

I was invited to interview around a month after applying for the role. Interview was fairly straightforward and I felt it went well until salary was mentioned. It was clear that I was being paid a lot more in my current role than they were intending to pay for this role, but when salaries aren’t advertised it makes it hard to estimate what a role pays. Some later research informed me that this is a company that doesn’t pay the going rate in most instances. Maybe they should be transparent about the salary in their job adverts. At this point in the interview, one of the interviewers gave an anecdote about how they took a lower salary to join the company and insinuated that it would be worth doing this due to other benefits on offer at the company, including unlimited holidays. Maybe this is fine if one already comes from wealth or has a wealthy partner to finance their lifestyle and mortgage, but for most of us this isn’t realistic! I realised at this point that I probably would be unsuccessful but continued with the process, hoping they would be open to paying a fair salary for a good candidate. At the end of the interview I was asked to submit a written test to demonstrate my writing skills, which was fairly straightforward but unnecessary at this level. I could’ve submitted a piece from my extensive portfolio, if this exercise was really about making sure I could write. A few days later I received a rejection email with the reason given that there were other candidates who had more relevant experience. Therefore the written exercise was quite unnecessary, if the decision was made based on the experience on my CV. A disappointing end to what had promised to be a good experience of this company. And one that reinforces the problem in this industry that only people from wealthy, non-working class backgrounds are allowed to enjoy a career in publishing.