Penguin Random House interview questions

I was called in for an interview quite promptly after the deadline had elapsed which is always appreciated. However, rather than the usual phone screening, the interview went straight to a panel of three people. They asked me four or so very general questions that I had to come up with specific examples for in order to make the questions make any sense (for example, they asked me: how would I approach marketing based on a title's metadata -- if you know publishing, this is kind of a pointless question for reasons I won't get into here). Although I answered all the questions well, they did not invite me to the next round of interviews because they felt my skills were too similar to the ones already possessed by the team. I found that response strange because if their team truly had my skills, they wouldn't be in the situation they are currently (namely, complete obscurity to the Canadian reading public). Too bad -- they are doing some interesting things, but perhaps not enough.

It was a 3 step process. First you spoke with the recruiter, then you spoke 1 pair of art directors, and then another pair of art directors, and then back to the recruiter.