I applied for a public relations position on the Human Capital Management team. I received an e-mail inviting me to move forward to the next step less than three days after applying. The next step was to complete a one page public affairs plan and an op-ed piece. The instructions gave a few minor details, with the most relevant detail being that the primary audience would be the teachers and teachers' unions. These types of tasks are typical in the hiring process in my line of work. Yet, this was the first time this had been asked of me before knowing if I had an interview. So, I spent a weekend conducting lengthy research so that my assumptions would be valid and relevant. Then, I prepared the most detailed one page communications plan possible and the op-ed piece. Since I had a limited amount of space, I chose to focus my plan on the various ways that I would reach the primary target audience of teachers and teachers' unions. I included traditional and non-traditional methods and aimed to give effective and creative methods of addressing the challenges I found in my research. Within a day or so of submitting my plan and op-ed piece, I received an e-mail telling me that I had been granted a phone interview. During our interview, there were long uncomfortable pauses. The interviewer said the pauses were caused by her concentrating on typing my responses. I was asked how long I spent on the project. I told her about the time I spent over the weekend. The silence continued and I wasn't sure if they were pleased or dissatisfied with the amount of time and effort I had put into the project. I was then asked to walk through my plan and the interviewer followed up with clarifying questions. Then, she asked why I had only focused on one target audience and not the "general public" as an audience. I explained that the instructions stated that teachers and teachers' unions would be my primary audience which was also the group that I had the most factual information to base my plans upon. The interviewer then asked what information would I need to develop tactics and strategies for the “general public.” I told her I would have to make assumptions about who in the "general public" would be most important to reach and based upon those assumptions I gave her examples of the information I would need to develop successful strategies and tactics. She followed my response with a request for me to guess at what tactics and strategies I might use . Without data, feeling uncomfortable and frankly being completely thrown off with the line of persistent hypothetical questioning, I gave examples based upon work I had done to reach similar audiences in previous positions. She then circled back to asking me about what type of information I would need to make a more educated guess about how to reach the "general public" as an audience. This line of questioning ultimately was 80% of my interview. I tried to identify what information I was not giving the interviewer. She just kept circling back, as if she had found a weakness. Anyone working in communications knows the importance of defining a target audience, understanding their specific attitudes and demographics, knowing how to reach them and where to reach them. So, the "general public" would be a poor audience choice to develop a plan of specific targeted strategies and tactics. This truly soured my interview experience. I had researched my interviewer, read her resume and knew her background. I seriously doubted that she was inexperienced and unaware of what she was doing. I did feel that she considered herself quite superior to me and that she had found something she did not like in my need for more information. So, I completed the interview feeling like I had failed. I was told that if I moved forward, I would be invited to interview with a panel of key leadership and that I would have a response by the end of the week. The end of the week came and went. At the end of the following week, I received an e-mail stating that they had selected a more qualified candidate, but that there was another position they would like me to consider. I went to the website and reviewed the position description and failed to see the correlation to my my experience. Yet, I responded and stated that I was interested. I unfortunately assumed that I would be granted another phone interview for the role. I instead received an e-mail with a new exercise to complete and was told after completing the exercise I would be notified if I would be interviewing for the position. After spending so much time on the previous exercise, I decided to call the HR person to find out why this position appeared to be a good fit and what the position entailed. I left two messages and stressed the importance of getting a response in time for me to meet the deadline for submission. I did not receive another call or e-mail.