Cultural Vistas Interview Questions
& Process

I applied for Administrative Assistant for the Train-USA project but got an email saying they wanted to interview me for Participant Advisor instead. The first interview was a phone call which was on time and went smoothly. I was told I'd hear back in about a week but it took 2.5 weeks to get an email inviting me to an in-person interview in Manhattan. The in-person interview started a bit late and had three interviewers: the HR rep from the phone call and two project leaders. They just read questions off a list and didn't seem very interested in the answers or ask follow-up questions. They said I'd hear back the week after Thanksgiving. About a week after that deadline, I got a form rejection email. The whole process was decent but took a long time for a generic rejection.

I had two interviews for this role, starting with a phone call and then a Skype interview. Both interviews were over 45 minutes long. The questions were pretty general. I was put off by the interview process. I asked several times about the actual role of the position within the organization, but they just said they wanted someone who would 'figure things out on their own' and 'ask if they are having trouble.' They also mentioned that the actual job responsibilities were quite different from what was advertised, with only about 25% of the ad's description being accurate and the other 75% being grant writing. I felt misled about the position. I didn't get an offer, but I think I dodged a bullet. It took them two weeks to inform me I didn't get the job, and they sent a generic email rejection despite having had two interviews with me. I thought they could have at least been courteous enough to reject me with a phone call or voicemail after I spent over an hour and a half talking with them.

I put in my application on the website and they got back to me after about a week and a half. A phone screen happened a few days after that, which went on for over an hour. Then, the following week, I had an interview via Skype. Everyone on staff was super nice, but the Skype interview felt pretty rigid. They didn't adapt their questions based on my responses or probe deeper into any specific topics, which made it feel like we didn't really cover anything in depth and there was a lot of repeating.

So I applied and the recruiter reached out pretty fast, like, communication was great at first. Then I had three interviews pretty much back to back within a week. After the last one, they said they'd get back to me in a few days. But then, after chasing them a lot, it took over two months to hear anything. If you want to work somewhere that respects people's time, I wouldn't really suggest Cultural Vistas.