New Job Again?

Went for a job interview about 2 weeks ago for an Interior Design position and during the interview, I was able to learn more about the job.

Unlike the regular Interior Design firms that have now saturated the market, this company has very clear job positions in their company, if you are an Interior Designer, all you have to do is design, and if you are a Project Manager , then you just have to Project Manage. Majority of the ID firms in the market would usually require the ID to do both the Interior Designing as well as the Project Management and I have never enjoyed the latter because that is usually where a bulk of my anxiety originates from.

So anyways, I spoke to the boss of the company and first of all, he was 30 minutes late for the interview, so the first impression I had of him wasn't great, then the interview starts and he starts talking about his company and asks me about my skill set and experience, after which, he asked me if I had some time because he wanted to show me a 20 minute video, so I told him I did, but I was not expecting the video to actually be 25 minutes long , I thought he said 20 minutes as a figure of speech, I thought it was going to just be a quick 10 minute video and that was it, but it had the same running time as an episode of Attack on Titan, like it was really long and throughout the video, I was just hoping it would end soon because my brain was legit starting to switch off after a while.

The video finally ends, the boss walks in a bit embarrassed at how long the video was and he starts asking me about my impression of the company, I told him I didn't expect the video to actually be 25 minutes long and he laughs it off, but then I told him I was interested to be part of the company because what they are offering is what I have been looking for for a while now, he then tells me that he wants to give me an assignment to gauge my skills, and it's as ridiculous as the length of his introduction video.

The assignment was to create a full design proposal based on a floorplan he will be giving me after the interview.  

He didn't specify exactly what the proposal needed, but he did tell me that I needed to prepare a space planning proposal and a mood board, to which I ask him if 3D rendering is required, and he sort of left it up to me, but then said something along the lines of...

"It's up to you, but we will gauge how desperate a candidate really wants the job based on their proposal."

... which translated to "if you don't prepare a 3D rendering, then we will assume you are not desperate enough to be considered for the position" and to be honest, I was itching to do some Interior Design related work, so I agreed to it, and I told him that I needed some time to do it, he was agreeable to it 

He sends me the floorplan the very night and I thought he would send me a simple floorplan like this....

not this...

... but nope, because this is a test, of course he had to send me this complicated multi angled floorplan...

... the lines may be straight, but almost every wall is at a different angle, it was such a pain. He then asked when we can meet for the second round, and after seeing the floorplan, I knew I needed some time, so I told him if we could meet on the first week of March and he agreed. 

I managed to do the AutoCAD out within 2 to 3 days, did a SketchUp of the empty apartment at work because it was pretty quiet in the store for the past few days, and then I get a message from the boss requesting to push the 2nd Interview forward due to scheduling conflicts as he wanted me to meet a few more people for the second round. I was a little bumped out about it because that meant I had 1 week short to complete the proposal, and I also had to take leave to accede to his timing, but I understand the timing issue, so I agreed to it and applied for leave. He felt quite bad about having to trouble me so much, but I figured it was a valid reason to take leave from work and I could enjoy my two days back to back off from work because the next day happened be my off day. 

Before the Interview, I will say, I was pretty proud of my proposal because I put in quite a bit of effort for it. I was expecting the boss and his group to be impressed by how much effort I had put into the proposal for the interview, so I went to the office feeling quite proud of myself.

I reach the office about a minute late, the boss invites me in and then informs me that unfortunately, only him and his co-founder will be attending the interview today because the other guys are not available... 

A part of me was relieved because I really didn't want to present to so many people, but another part of me also felt a bit cheated about it because I had agreed to this new date due to your request to meet the other team, and now half of them are not able to make it, which meant I had rushed out the proposal and wasted my leave for nothing.

Anyways, I start to set everything up in the meeting room for the 2 of them, and when I open my Proposal, I was sort of  hoping they would be impressed by the amount of work that had gone into it, the amount of renderings I did, but there wasn't any of that, the both of them just kinda stared pretty intensely at the screen, as if they were trying to spot issues they had with my proposal.

So I go through my proposal and I could sense throughout the presentation that the other co-founder was starting to get bored because at one point, he started looking at his phone instead of paying attention to what I was trying to present. Seeing him lose interest made me rush through the presentation even more because I just wanted to end the presentation as soon as possible lest he ends up dozing off.

The moment the presentation ended, that was when things kind of went south for me because it became critique time, it was like I was back in Poly

They really only highlighted the negative things about the presentation, I mean they were not mean or rude about it, it was generally really constructive feedback, but for the amount of work and effort I put into the project, it would have been nice to have some my hard work acknowledged.

It was quite a demoralizing experience to say the least. I went in all proud of my proposal and I left the office really second guessing myself a lot. I later found out that majority of their designers were given the exact same floorplan to play around with and they definitely came up with much more interesting layouts than the one I came up with, so that was definitely the wake up call that I needed. I mean I knew my designs were never super impressive, but to potentially be joining a new company and have the weakest design sense is a bit worrying for me.

It would be a good place to learn and grow as a designer, but I don't really know if the company would be a right fit for me because I came into the interview for the job not to join the company to learn, but to come in as an experience designer, so I'm not sure how I feel about that. I mean if this had been a company that I had followed on Instagram before, and am a huge fan of their work, then me joining the company to learn from the team is definitely something I wouldn't mind, but it's not, it's a company that reached out to me out the blue one day, a company that I have never heard of before that has a decent portfolio.

I think my ego would probably stop me from accepting the job offer if one was going to be made to me because I really am not feeling the company anymore, to be honest, even though what they are offering is what I am looking for, there is something with the company that I just don't really vibe with. 

Update :

An offer was made and I have requested for some time to think about it. Not sure how the boss will react to my request though.