Recently, I had an interview for a glorified customer services role with Hootsuite - a company which I had highly regarded and followed since it's birth. So when I got called for an online interview, I was very much delighted to say the least! Ensured that I had completed my homework well in advance as this was an opportunity not to miss! Unfortunately, things did not really pan out very well and turned out to be probably the worst interview experience I have been through! (of the two dozen or so I have had).
Cutting the experience short, there pretty much was no setting or tone of the interview and a very poor level of interaction with the interviewers; I had rushed back from client meetings from the other side of London half an hour before a 6pm start, when technology wants to fail it will - skype failed on my laptop, and hence the interview started a few minutes late (fortunately, had been saved by my Galaxy Note 2 - which meant sitting in an awkward position as so the folks on the other side could hear and see me!) The session commenced with an ad-hoc introduction of three people, of whom I could only just about see two, no structure or direction of how the interview was going to be run was given. More so, socially Hootsuite appear to be a fun and energetic place to be and pre-interview a similar tone was given, yet getting to the interview there was someone of a mixed unwelcoming 'please let this already be over' undertone! Seemingly, all of which left me a tad confused and nervous as I could not quite asses whether to go for a conversational or professional tone. All in all what should have been a standard, simple enough interview and which in all earnest I should have personally flown through, ended up in an embarrassing case of verbal diarrhea on my behalf!
Expectantly, I had not been successful for the role - and to be honest I did not feel too bad about it.
However, this made me question the brand reputation of companies that came about in social media boom period. Hootsuite pretty much provide social health checks for corporations, so naturally one assumes they themselves have a pretty good social media strategy. Which raises the question, 'are organisations really as successful internally?' Being an individual who thrives on learning and delivering new projects, my gut in this instance was shouting out to me would I learn and gain the right skills and competencies to grow and become an expert in this field, would I have strong leadership to look up to with space to also lead my own teams, and is this a place I would enjoy working at...
On the plus side, I realised traditional dinosaur organisations (the consultancies) are probably the best places to better equip me with the right skills in order to grow and manage an organisations effectively. Consultancies have a tradition of delivering professional and effective solutions with always the long term strategy in mind for their clients. I do wonder are Hootsuite a bit complacent with the service they provide? Did they only rise to 'fame' due to other socially driven organisations (Mashable/LinkedIn) giving them too much marketing appraisal, which as a result has forced them to really sit down and work on their offerings as now larger clients would actually require a quality service. But that said as initially assessed, I imagine Hootsuite are now experiencing an exciting growth phase as they have made their mark as social media experts..
On the contrary, what is stopping the progressive (dinosaur) IT consultancies from offering similar, (more professional/corporatish) social services? as most likely they already have a bulk of big clients whom they deliver technical solutions to already on a broader scale/strategy side of things...
It would be interesting to see employee satisfaction ratings of high growth start-ups, as I was not particularly convinced on the sustainability of the 'social' culture at Hootsuite. Generally, I think as long as companies are providing a quality service, with great attention to customer services throughout the whole life-cycle, a natural (non-social) media would be more effective means of growth.
Still a big fan of Ryan Holmes and his humble journey to bringing Hootsuite to life, and will carry on recommending Hootsuite's offerings to some of my clients, and I do hope I am wrong and had just a one-off bad experience...
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