Bottomline Technologies

I applied for a presentation design position with this company back in July 2015 and received a call from the HR rep. Of course, as with every job screening today, the first question asked was my salary requirements (because that’s really all companies care about). As always, I stated I’m completely open to offers. When she told me the salary I was slightly shocked as it was on par with what I earned back in 1999 (to be fair, the job description said "1 to 2 years of experience required," which meant they're looking for someone under the age of 25, so my bad for applying!). But, because she seemed impressed with my background she said we might be able to negotiate something better when the time comes, so she scheduled me for a phone interview with the hiring manager.

I am still shocked at how nasty and disinterested in speaking with me this guy seemed to be. I sent him several files and also directed him to view my online portfolio (which he clearly had not reviewed before our call), none of which emitted a single reaction from him. I sent one slide with both the "before" and the "after" versions, explaining how the client sent me the "before" version with a request to "make it pretty," and I redid the whole thing to better convey the message. He asked me, "Why couldn't you just make it look pretty?" What? Is this guy for real? I replied, "Well, would you understand the 'before' version as it is, just with prettier boxes?" He said no, so I'm really baffled at that dumb question. 

He finally asked me what I found to be downright offensive, "Are you capable of working with CIOs" -- offensive because with nearly two decades of experience you better believe I know how to work with CIOs!!! It was a CIO who directly hired me in the job I was currently holding (the contract gig at Fidelity), and had he bothered to review my LinkedIn profile he'd see some very nice recommendations written by SVPs. I'm not some dumb kid who just got off the boat, and if that's what you're looking for then you shouldn't have wasted my time to begin with. My final attempt to stimulate some dialogue resulted in him getting downright nasty with me. I said the Mac version of PPT has serious issues (for example, it's missing the selection panel and the animation pane is sorely dimished). He barked at me, "well our salespeople all use Macs and you have to be respectful of that!" Seriously, what crawled up this guy’s ass and died? I silently giggled when at the end he asked me if I have any questions. Really? You've barely said anything to me except to yell and be condescending, how exactly can I be inspired to ask you anything at this point? When the call ended I knew immediately I had wasted half an hour (I received their rejection email two days later, thank heavens). I honestly don't understand why this call was even scheduled.