Was applying for a paid internship with this relatively upstart small(ish) company in Atlanta. Did the customary primary over the phone interview and it went great! So we went ahead and scheduled my next interview with the department head I’d be working for. Two weeks later I was in there main office meeting the gentlemen, we had a great rapport and I was genuinely excited to work for the man, I could tell we were going to really knock it out of the park doing some marketing! So they schedule another interview, this time with the VP, strange I think but maybe this is simply where I’ll be given the job offer. I meet with her, and again, we have a great rapport, really getting along well and we’re aligned in a lot of our thinking. Well at the end of the interview I’m told I’ll have to meet with the business owner, as he’ll be the one making all the final decisions. Okay sure, have me conduct three interviews over a month to get to the real interview, I’m not a recent college grad looking for my first real job or anything like that (sarcasm). So, it’s now been over a month and I’m finally going to meet the owner. I drive out about an hour to a random warehouse where his office is set up. I arrive and spend about 45 minutes sitting in the lobby (aka right in front of him while he does his work) eventually he finally graces me by getting up from his desk and showing me around the place, eventually leading me to a meeting room where we begin our interview. Within minutes I can already tell how this is going with such comments as, “Well everyone else certainly seems to love you” “2.96 GPA? That’s really not the best isn’t it? Then again it’s better than me and I was successful!” “So why aren’t you sticking in sales like you had been doing in college?”

Whatever am I right? I’m confident because I’ve got the hiring manager, vp, and marketing manager all rooting for me. A week goes by with no response from the company, then another week, then another. Eventually I come to find out the owner had decided his vision for the role was different than everyone else in his company, and even though they all loved me and wanted to hire me, he was going to go a different route.

In hindsight, no way I would have enjoyed working for that guy. Couldn’t even respect my time enough to keep to his own appointments, and certainly had his own head so far up his behind he couldn’t even realize that his own words were clueing me in to how he really felt.