Environment America Interview Questions
& Process

For this entry level Campaign Associate role, there were three rounds of interviews, and each one went for about an hour. Everyone I spoke with was super nice, but a lot of the questions seemed to be probing my political views to see if they aligned with the company's. I ended up declining the offer because I felt the salary wasn't competitive enough for what the job required.

This whole process took like 84 days, almost three months of just waiting and trying to schedule stuff. I had three virtual interviews, and all of them were with people not even from Environment America. They never really told me what I'd actually be doing day-to-day, just that it 'depends' even when I asked multiple times. The first interview was pretty standard HR stuff, asking why I applied and about my background. The second one was similar but had some questions about how I'd handle environmental campaign problems. The third interview was weird, it was just to see if I fit with the company's values. I found this problematic because they advertise as non-partisan and working with everyone, but this interview was basically a political quiz. If you don't agree with them on everything, especially environmental justice, you're out. It was about 27 questions with two choices each. After that, they said I'd have to wait two weeks for an answer, and I got rejected. It just seems odd that if a group values diversity and different opinions, they'd have a whole interview round to weed out people who might disagree on personal political views. Like I said, it was an 84-day process, total waste of time.

The first interview was pretty good and the person was nice and made it easy to ask stuff. The second interview is where things went south. The interviewer wasn't from Environment America but from The Public Interest Network, which made it tough to figure out what the organization was really about. What's more, it felt like for every answer I gave, he argued with me and I felt super disrespected. He asked me questions about human rights and environmental justice, then told me that Environment America doesn't care about equity in climate change solutions. There was a clear difference in values between us, and he made no move to fix it. He even went as far as pushing his political views. Their motto 'environment for environment sake' is basically code for doing whatever it takes to find sustainable options, even if it hurts lower income communities and minority groups. As someone fresh out of college wanting to work in conservation, I felt this organization just wanted to use my passion for the planet and pay me very little.

I applied through Environment America's online portal. After 2 weeks, they contacted me via email and told me I made it to the next step. The next step was filling out a questionnaire. After this step, they told me that I advance to the third step that is having an Interview with the head of the Department of Environment America's office. I schedule my interview and answer a bunch of questions, the guy that interviewed me seem engaged in the conversation and was really nice to me. He told me that they were going to contact me within 2 weeks, but they took about 4 weeks to do so.