MacArthur Foundation Interview Questions
& Process

It's a brutal process, lengthy and slow, but everyone you interview with is extremely personable and the HR team is very transparent and helpful. You can tell everyone likes working there, it's a competitive place to work and the interview process reflects that. There were 4 rounds. One with HR recruiter, an HR Lead, Hiring manager, all over zoom. Then in person with hiring manager again and a panel of 8 people all from the department / team split into two groups overall 2 hour process in person at the office downtown.

This is an interview review for a MacArthur Foundation affiliate, Lever for Change. The first round I had a casual 30-minute interview with an HR associate at MacArthur, followed by a 30-minute interview with the hiring manager and COO of Lever for Change. Both went very well, and about 2 hours after wrap up, I received a request for a second round of interviews. The second round of interviews was grueling. Four 30-minute interviews, back-to-back with no breaks. First interview was with the team members you'd be working closest with. The second interview was with two VPs, one of which asked very vague questions which didn't seem very thoughtful. The third interview was with an HR manager who was very informative and checked in to see if the job requirements were a good fit, along with compensation, benefits, and left time to ask any pertinent questions. The last interview was one-on-one with the hiring manager, who was very nice and said to treat it as more of a conversation than an interview. After wrapping up, I received a copy of the benefits package from the HR manager, and then never heard back again. I had to follow up twice in order to get any information on the process. It felt disrespectful to the time and energy that I put into preparing for 6 interviews, only to not even receive any updates. It took over a month before they finally told me they were pursuing other candidates. There were some great things about the process, but overall, the lack of communication after giving them 3 hours of my time, plus time spent following up and preparing for so many interviews was just such a negative way to wrap up my experience with them.

I got to two interview rounds. The first was a screener, and the second involved an hour with two team members and then 30 minutes with HR. Everyone was mostly really nice, and I liked how upfront they were about their interview timeline. But, I didn't hear anything back until I ended up messaging my first interviewer on LinkedIn way after their stated timeline. I felt like the job description was too general for what they were actually looking for based on the interviews. It seemed like they wanted someone who also knew graphic design and SEO, but that wasn't clear in the job description. It also felt more like a project manager role handling admin tasks rather than communications. I asked an interviewer about MacArthur's policies for ethical communication about the stories of the people they serve, and I was a bit surprised he didn't seem happy to answer. He mostly just said the nonprofits liked the publicity, but didn't really talk about the importance of making sure people in the stories/photos are respected and paid. This is a big topic in the nonprofit world right now, so I was surprised! They give out grants of $10 million or more, so they should definitely be able to make their grantees pay people featured in any stories or photos they provide. I think me asking about this was the main reason I didn't get a third round, but I also prepared more for communication questions instead of project management.

The interview process started with a 30-minute screener via Zoom with a recruiter. Following that, there was another 30-minute Zoom call with an HR representative. The final stage was a 30-minute Zoom meeting with the Director of Communications and an Associate to the VP of Communications.