Step 1: A recruiter emailed me and set up sometime to talk with me. He spoke with me and explained me about the role and that hiring manager is interested to talk with me. In the job description, it was clearly stated that I needed to manage 4 - 5 member team. Infact, I managed a lot more than that number for multiple years. Step 2: Recruiting manager called me for a 30 mins phone and extended it to 45 mins. She liked my resume because I have done work that is very relevant to what they are looking for. She was very open and told me that she is impressed and whether I could come in person to talk with her. I agreed and went in to talk with her. It was a 1 hr interview and she again told me that she is truly impressed with my resume and that she wanted me to come and talk with other members of the team. She was a Vice President (Titles are inflated at Visa). Step 3: I went in for a 6 interviews on one day. I had 2 case interviews ( an ex-consultant gave me a couple of random slides and asked me to explain what is going on in slides). I did well because I gave answers and substantiated my answers with what I explained them. Another woman (she is a peer of my hiring manager) came to interview (she was 15 mins late). During the interview she went onto brag how great her team is and that they are being constantly pinged by companies like Macy's. It explains me the unexplained inferiority complex she has and added to that she told me that she knows almost all the senior management at VISA. She dropped some names of the people too and told me how her team gets a lot of headcount. During the interview, she told me that my role is an individual contributor and that all the work (including all in the basic analysis has to be done by me). She went onto say that she is a very good friend of my hiring manager also and she influences the decision a lot. I listened to all the conversation and kept quiet. After her came another peer of my hiring manager - the guy asked me how will I pick up if I am not payments industry background. BTW, he is just a normal IT guy (another VP) who happened to set up some basic Big Data systems and nothing more than that. I worked in Big Data Analytics extensively - I told him that I did quite a bit of homework and explained him about the entire payment industry and also how it works. In my personal opinion, if they are very particular about payment industry folks, I believe they should not have called me and wasted my time. For the job I applied, payment industry is not required and was clearly stated in the job requirement also. Step 4: I get an email a week later from the recruiter that they decided to move with other candidates. I knew the reason was 2 interviewers. Looking back, I would never prefer to work with those type of professionals also.
