Hill & Knowlton Interview Questions
& Process

I was contacted directly by the company, without applying, for the Junior Account PR position. The first interview was a call with HR. An HR person was present, and asked me to wait for a colleague. Both remained on the call without introducing themselves and immediately asked me to talk about myself. During my presentation, they realized they hadn't introduced themselves. When I asked about the client sectors I would be following (not brand names, but work areas), they couldn't provide an answer. I asked this to be transparent and understand if my experience could really add value. I also mentioned I would only consider a change for an improved offer. However, when I asked for details about the contract type, they said it wouldn't be worse than my current position, but gave no further details. After a few days, a second interview was proposed, but due to scheduling conflicts, communication dragged on too long, and another candidate was chosen in the meantime. Overall, I perceived a lack of organization and transparency, which are fundamental elements, especially in the early selection stages.

It was a long process that could have been avoided by not progressing past step one since the money was never going to meet expectations. 1. Conversation with HR 2. Interview with two senior people at HQ 3. Assessment task - three days to complete 4. Presenting the assessment to a group of four people 5. Interview with CEO The communications from the in-house recruiter was very poor. Being busy is no excuse when you are asking for so many hours to be spent in the interview funnel, especially when you work for a communications consultancy. It is not a good look for Burson and I don't recommend it.

I applied online and heard back in 2 weeks. They wanted to schedule a call for the next day but I didn't have time for the entire week so I pushed it to the week after. I had an hour-long second interview two days after the initial screening and I had a week to work on the take-home technical assessment. A week later, they arranged a 30-minute interview for the next day. In general, all of the interviews were scheduled on such a short notice. All of the people I interviewed with thoroughly explained what they do at H+K without asking the typical "What do you know about us" question, which is something I liked. The person that final-interviewed me said they will get back to me within a week regardless of the result. It's been a month since the final interview but I haven't been hearing anything back despite three follow up emails. The HR replied to my second email that someone else will get back to me with an update the next day but they did not. Based on their LinkedIn post, it seems like they hired someone else for this position. It is very unprofessional of them not to update a candidate who went through a final interview and dedicated 4+ hours for the entire process. I would have not interviewed for this company if I knew I was going to get ghosted eventually. I would have appreciated an automatic email updating the status of my application rather than being ghosted.

I interviewed with H+K Sydney after applying online on LinkedIn. They didn't need a resume but wanted answers to some questions to know me better. About 2-3 weeks after I submitted those, they called me if I was shortlisted. Then I had a group interview at their office with account managers and executives. They called me about 10 days later to let me know the outcome. It was a really good experience, the interviewers were nice and even gave me drinks. It was tough though, having to talk to several interviewers back-to-back.