Gartner Recruiter Interview Questions
& Process

Got reached out by a recruiter for a role, then they told me the role moved to another country after I followed up. A few months later, same recruiter reached out for a similar role and we scheduled a call. After sharing my details and confirming, they ghosted for 3 weeks! After following up, there was hardly an apology, but I did the first interview. It was online and had basic questions about my experience, why I want to work there, and projects I've worked on. They scheduled the second interview, but it got rescheduled twice. A second team member gave conflicting reasons for the reschedules compared to the first recruiter. During the second interview, they told me the role was already filled, despite not canceling the interview earlier. They wasted weeks of my time ghosting, resurfacing, and rescheduling, only to tell me the role was taken during the interview. I took a lot of time out of my schedule for this. A joke.

So I want to begin this review by saying that my experience with Gartner has been the absolute worst candidate experience I've ever had. In my 10 years of experience and 6 years specifically in recruitment, it's now a prime example of what NOT to do during an interview process. Even after all the issues and feedback I gave them directly, I still see no changes to their job ads or descriptions. This tells me they don't care about their candidates or employees, as they won't even take advice when they mess up. The interview process dragged on for 4-5 weeks, and I spoke with 9 different people from the TA team across 3 interview stages. It felt like this workload could have been managed with a smoother process and more effort to build rapport as part of the candidate experience. The first stage was a regular phone screening call where we discussed experience, competencies, salary expectations, and LOCATION (I'm highlighting this because it's important later). The second stage was a Teams meeting with a recruiter, covering competencies, expectations, and LOCATION again for the first half, then moving on to values-based questions (they encouraged using the STAR method throughout the process). The third stage was another video interview stage, split into two calls with two team members in Spain and two in the UK. It was similar to the last video interview, discussing competency, expectations, and LOCATION, and finishing with STAR-based competency questions. At the end of all this, I got an offer from Gartner, which I verbally accepted and sent my details for the contract. After submitting my info, I heard nothing for a week. Then, I got a call from someone on the team telling me they were retracting the offer because my location was 'outside of their location strategy.' This strategy meant being a maximum of 60 minutes from the office, and my commute is 75 minutes. Understandably, I was furious because at no point during the process was I vague about my location or my willingness to commute to the office when needed (even though we were never required to go to the office during the interviews). They admitted it was their mistake and should have been caught earlier, even though it was discussed at every single stage. After arguing about it, hearing 'it's out of our hands,' 'we can't change the policy,' and 'all we can say is sorry' was painful. I realized then that the company cares about numbers, not people. A people-first company would overlook a policy like this for a candidate who was motivated, met all the job requirements, and was committed to coming into the office the required days. Gartner is not a people-first company. Every candidate has the right to decide what a reasonable commute is for them, not the business.

The interview process was respectful. Most of the hiring team wasn't based in the US. The hiring manager interview was pretty standard and went well. The last part was a group virtual interview, which was a bit out of the ordinary and felt a little awkward.