The recruiter questions were pretty basic, and the recruiter was polite and professional. Most of her questions dealt with walking her through my previous experiences, and my familiarity with various research practices.
The problem is the structure of the interviews, because there are way too many and the ones they have are ridiculous. One of the more ridiculous stages was a "writing assessment" where they ask candidates to write a short blog post about some Gartner "research" finding. I have a PhD and am a published author already, so they must not be looking for someone who can write about research or statistics, and they are clearly not looking for expertise in those areas. I've done writing assessments for the federal government and have done well in that process, so clearly the issue isn't my writing.
It comes across as though the position is misleading and the job duties one who is ultimately hired will be expected to fulfill are in no way reflective of what was communicated in the job description. If it was truly a research-based position, why focus on a blog post as a sample and not ask for a sample of analytical work already done? A published research product or analytical report seems like an obviously more suitable metric. If the recruiter was being truthful about the nature of the position, then the primary audience for this position would be with clients, not the general public so a general audience blog post seems like a strange priority given that clients and the general public have different information needs.
I would not recommend anyone interview with this company until some major structural changes are made to their interview and evaluation process, the very least of which is reducing the number of "evaluations" to a maximum of 3. Gartner is not Google or Amazon, and the Principal, Research position is not a C-suite position so there is no need for more than 3 interviews, and even 3 is too much. For this position, a recruiter phone screen and a 1 hour hiring manager interview is sufficient and nothing more than that is necessary.
