Dear All
I am having a difficult time dealing with BCG's HR team and am wanting to hear if anyone else is having similar experiences and your thoughts on how this reflects on the firm?
By way of background I applied to one of their expert positions in a specialist practice 6 months ago. Approximately 4 months later BCG HR reached out to schedule an interview. I responded promptly but to date have still not been able to confirm an interview time.
I don't want to go into specifics for fear of outing myself but in short I have experienced the following from the BCG HR contact I am dealing with:
- Lack of business and service sense - not wanting to go into specifics here but the lady I am dealing with lacks basic judgment and ability on the candidate journey, the candidate experience and how to manage candidate expectations.
- Scheduling an interview for me but not actually emailing me to confirm the interview (I only found out about the interview on the morning of the interview when another HR member emailed me to say that the interview was cancelled). This was approximately 7 weeks ago now. I have been trying to reschedule an interview since then;
- Not scheduling an informational chat as she promised. To date she still hasn't been able to schedule an informational chat.
- Missed every promised deadline and promised action. e.g. not updating me or getting back to me when promised. This was both right from the get go and in response to me chasing her up over the last 7 weeks.
- She has now dropped off the face of the earth. I sent a final follow up (2 in total over the past 4 weeks) last week and she hasn't responded.
My experience with HR is a mixed bag. If I hear of things like the above from say a Big 4 or a Fortune 500 I'm not surprised. I have had experiences with McK, GS and JPM each of which was superlative. But to see this from a firm the stature of BCG is shocking to say the least and flys in the face of every value that BCG stands for (both their client and firm values).
Does anyone have any thoughts on this and whether this is symptomatic of greater problems at BCG? While I may have got a dud HR lady, this also reflects very poorly on the BCG partners and consultants who need to work with HR to ensure the candidate has an exceptional journey. They are operating an integrated organisation and need to communicate clearly to HR if there is any holdup.
Also, any strategies you can think of to get my interview or should I just move on?
PS - As I understand, according to my HR contact the reason for the scheduling challenge on BCG's end is that the Principal I am interviewing with is travelling and unable to commit to a time. I am assuming that given this is a specialist expert hire, it's only Principals in that specialist area (of which there are not many of in my region) who can do the interview.
