San Francisco Symphony Interview Questions
& Process

Started with a screening round with a third-party HR person, followed by three more rounds with staff members. Everything seemed to be progressing towards an offer, but then they abruptly stopped responding and ghosted me, which was extremely unprofessional and disrespectful of my time after I had already invested in four rounds of interviews. Later, the person who was hired for the role contacted me to interview for a different position, completely unaware that I had been a candidate for her job. It was a totally unprofessional mess, and I will never interview there again.

The interview process lasted about 4 weeks, starting with an initial HR manager phone screen and concluding with an onsite interview. It was a pleasant experience, and both the HR and IT teams were professional.

I had applied for a few jobs with the SF Symphony a while back. For the first one, I applied online, then had a bunch of phone interviews since I lived out of state. They said they really liked me but I'd have to pay my own way to fly out for an in-person interview. I figured they were pretty much ready to offer me the job since I'd done similar roles before. I flew out and paid for the hotel myself. I had in-person interviews with a few people. After about a week, I found out I didn't get the job. It felt weird that they'd have me spend money to fly out if they weren't sure about offering me the position, especially since they later said they were undecided between me and another person. I interviewed for another position later on. I had one or two phone interviews, then an in-person one. In both cases, they asked a lot about why I wanted to work for the SF Symphony, why I was interested in classical music, and why I thought I was a good fit. I was living nearby for this second one and talked to some people who worked there informally. They all said the company culture was bad and people left often. I decided to pull my application. Part of it was getting another offer from a similar place, but also remembering how they encouraged me to spend my own money for the first interview and then didn't offer me the job. The company culture just doesn't seem great.

I got a call from HR 3 weeks after applying online. They did a phone screen then. The next week, I had a 1-hour 1:1 interview. The second round was 4 hours long; I met 3 people for 30 minutes each and 1 person for an hour. There was also an Excel test in that second interview. They told me 10 days later that they chose someone with non-profit experience.