After sending my CV and cover letter in I was contacted to arrange a phone interview which took several days to arrange because Joanna was either busy or not at work. When I finally managed to arrange a date I was on the phone with her for less than 10 minutes. She was rather rude in her manner on the phone, cutting me up mid sentence, asked only 3 questions in total. I’m not really sure why I was invited to a phone interview when she clearly wasn’t interested in hiring me. I have been offered feedback but again haven’t been able to hear what it is because she’s very hard to get hold off and the staff who answer the phone clearly don’t pass on messages or she has deemed it to insignificant to follow up on.

Applied online and was then invited to get a feel for the company with a group of other interviewees. Initially a very impressive business and group of people. The business is sold as a place where you can grow and if you put the effort in you can make some serious money. Andrew and Guy ran this first day and it came across as if they had a genuine interest in you as a person and not just an employee. The benefits of working for them are ingrained into you and you leave feeling as if this is a business that knows what they are doing and it would be a great opportunity to work for them. Following this you are then shortlisted and invited back down to take part in some exercises; such as sorting out emails in terms of priority and actually cold calling hospitals to gain information on their employees. It must be said that anything organised by Andrew at this point is exceptional and you can tell he's good at what he does. However with the phone call exercise, it was my experience that half the numbers provided to me were no longer in service or lead to loops between the same trusts/hospitals on the list given. Therefore, this did not really give me a good chance to demonstrate my skills or gain an insight into what the job would be like. Finally, and this is what changed my impression of the organisation, the "competency interview" or at least their interpretation of one. This was the first contact with Joanna and the initial few questions were your standard what are you good at, why do you want the role etc; But it then took a U-turn and never in all of my interviews have I been asked how much debt I had, as if the answer had any impact on how well I could perform in the role. In hindsight I should have refuted the question and explained how rude it is to ask anyone such a question, interview or not. From then it was downhill and the ridiculous questions continued with items such as "who do you confide in most out of your parents", again as if this has any implications in which I can perform in the role. And how would you spend x amount of money, where it seems that any common sense response such as saving it is looked down upon in favour of just "splashing the cash" In the end I left the organisation with the complete opposite impression to when it first started. TLDR; Stroud's interview technique is now an often joked upon story due to its rudeness and downright inappropriateness.