Motive (CO) Interview Questions
& Process

So, the interview process involved a preliminary phone chat with the head of HR, followed by two in-person meetings. The in-person interviews were with team members and then the Director and VP of the department. The whole thing took about a month.

My creative partner and I interviewed for their open senior team position, and we both thought it went extremely well! We met with their head of recruiting, then rushed into meeting their VPs of creative in Denver(26+ years at Motive between them, so not a lot of external leadership experience), and then met with their GCDs of creative in LA (awesome team, we both walked away excited and fired up). The last conversation we had with their recruiter was to discuss setting up a final interview with the CCO while we simultaneously began the salary discussion. And then they ghosted us, which seems to be a pretty common theme. We're all adults, so stringing people along just to vanish is both disrespectful and unprofessional. From the jump it was very clear, Motive is a full blown sweatshop. They have a great client roster and thus a lot of opportunity, but everyone we spoke with mentioned working most weekends because they're drowning and desperately need more hands. It appears they don't really value anyone's time, be it an applicant's or their employees. To my fellow creatives, you've been warned.

I applied online and got a phone interview, then they invited me for an in-person interview. I met a few people there. During one of the interviews, the HR/hiring manager kept leaving to take personal calls. After the interview, I had to chase them for responses, and they were slow to get back to me. I was told I was one of the last two candidates and we discussed salary, which was very low. Then, Motive just stopped communicating. It's frustrating to wait for weeks, especially when you've just moved and are unemployed, and they didn't even have the courtesy to follow up. If they think ghosting candidates is okay, that's really bad. Their office looks nice and they have a good client list, but I've heard other negative things about Motive too.

In July, Motive had openings on the Account Service team. I went through a really long interview process for one of them with tons of people from different departments. They said they were going to make an offer, sent benefits info, and gave me a date. When that date passed, I followed up and found out they were moving me to a different team and a different role than the one I initially interviewed for. I interviewed for that second role. At the end of that, they still loved me and wanted to offer me the job, but then they wanted me to interview for a THIRD role. They said this last interview was just a 'vibe-check' to make sure it was a good fit. The team was late for this interview and spent the time very casually. After that, I was given another timeline. At this point, I also found out they couldn't meet my salary expectations that we had agreed on back in July. Unsurprisingly, they missed the timeline again and never ended up extending an offer. The whole thing from late July to early November was a mess. The agency does good work and I met smart people, but I felt really disrespected and like the process was disorganized.