Sallie Mae Interview Questions
& Process

I had a screening interview, a virtual interview with the hiring manager, and then drove 2.5 hours to their HQ to interview with 5 members of the team. Everyone was fantastic. I was told to give them a few weeks so I followed up with the internal recruiter 4 weeks later, silence. After a few days I reached out to the hiring manager; and, silence. A couple days later I awoke to an auto-rejection email, and never received any response from either individual I reached out to. I understand people are busy, but if you're going to have a candidate travel that far for interviews, common decency would be to at least send a "thanks but no thanks" email.

I had an initial remote interview with an HR person. It was mostly experience-based questions, plus a couple about how I'd fit in. It seemed to go well, and the interviewer said she was forwarding me to the next stage, which was supposed to be in-person interviews with different people. She even gave me a timeframe. But, the week before that next round, I still hadn't gotten any details about the date, time, or location. I tried to contact my HR person, but got no reply. The week the interview was supposed to happen came and went with still no word. I reached out a third time, still nothing. I had rearranged my business travel to make it for their interview schedule. You'd think this company wouldn't be so rude as to tell a good candidate they're moving on and then just disappear, right? Well, they did. At this point, it's obvious I've been ghosted. Ghosting candidates after they've spent time preparing is already bad. But telling candidates they're moving forward and then ghosting them is just plain wrong. This company is in the business of student loans, and many of their candidates probably need them. (e.g. student loans for grad school, co-signing for a family member, etc.) After how Sallie Mae treated me, do they really think I'd trust them with a huge financial deal? Their failure to even send a simple rejection email has probably cost them a lot of business – it's a really short-sighted business move. Basically, if you want to work for a company that doesn't care about potential customers and treats people poorly, Sallie Mae might be for you. But if you value yourself and want to work for a company that understands how important a customer is long-term, don't bother with Sallie Mae.

I interviewed with the Director of Marketing, and they moved me to the next step. They asked me to put together a full presentation about the company's competitors and marketing. After that, the talent acquisition team sent me the assignment details and asked when I was free for the next interview, but it never got scheduled. I put in a lot of time getting that presentation ready. Weeks went by with no word, and I followed up a bunch with both the Director and talent acquisition. Eventually, I just got an automated email saying the job was taken.

It was a pretty fast and effective interview process. The first step was a recruiter call, which was quite general. They asked about why I wanted to work at Sallie, what I knew about the company, and my motivations for applying. It's important to know their mission because they really emphasize it. I had about 3 or 4 interviews in total if you include the recruiter chat.