Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Interview Questions
& Process

Had a phone chat with the hiring manager. They asked me a bunch of questions about my background and how I've handled situations at work. It was about 30 minutes long, and they mentioned there might be another interview next week.

A third-party recruiter first contacted me. Then I spoke with the hiring manager. After that, I met with the hiring manager again along with two Directors. Following that, I had interviews with two more Directors. In total, I met with 5 people. Two of them seemed positive and genuinely seemed to like working there. The other three mostly complained about their colleagues and clearly didn't seem interested in interviewing me. After several interviews, and after being told I was their top candidate, they just went silent.

About a month after applying, I got an email from the recruiter asking for my availability for an interview. We scheduled a time, and I spoke with the hiring manager for about 30 minutes. They asked me some questions and then I had plenty of time to ask questions myself, which was nice. After that, they contacted my references. I didn't hear back from them though. The job posting is still up months later, and I have no clue why I wasn't selected or why they didn't even send a rejection email. It's a bummer because I think I would have liked the job and my experience seemed to be a good fit.

My gripe was not the team I interviewed with at all. The problem I had was with the recruitment team member in HR. After a great interview I was selected as a finalist and asked to provide references, which I did immediately. After about a week I reached out to the hr employee for an update and asked if she needed any more assistance from me. Her response was very terse and she seemed as though she was annoyed by my perfectly pleasant email. "Still working on it. thank you." was her reply. 3 weeks after that I still had not heard anything from HR or the scientists that I had connected with at WHOI, so I emailed again asking for an update. I contacted her directly simply requesting an update and instead of an email back from her, I got a non personal HR email with the subject line "Interviewed but not selected", followed by a very scripted email with a generic statement about how someone else was selected, which was obvious. I was a finalist who got pretty far in the process and this level of rejection warranted some more explanation and that automatic email following my personal and pleasant email felt like a low blow from a company that I have revered my whole life. This was a dream job for me. I don't think this is how WHOI would want to be represented by their HR team. I understand and respect the decision to go with another candidate but I felt as though I had reminded this person to reject me, then they did it like that... Very thoughtless, for someone in human resources. Again, I still admire and love WHOI just posting in hopes that someone will see this and changes can be made to how their HR/recruitment department conducts themselves to hopeful job candidates. I’m sure the scientists I connected with would not have wanted me disregarded in such a way.