The HR screen for a senior digital growth role at KEEN was honestly one of the strangest interview experiences I’ve had in a long time. The conversation lasted maybe 15 minutes and felt extremely surface level for a role of this scope. A large portion of the call was spent hearing about the recruiter’s own background and career journey, while very little time was spent understanding my actual experience (in fact, zero). The questions themselves were surprisingly shallow: * Why are you interested in KEEN? * Why did you leave Dr. Martens? (despite that not even being my current role) * Have you managed people? When I answered that I had managed a team of five and asked about the structure of the role since the job description didn’t mention direct reports, I was told it actually had one direct report. I explained that I enjoy leadership but still prefer staying close to the work as an IC operator, which is how the role had originally been positioned. What stood out most was that there didn’t seem to be much effort to evaluate whether I could actually do the job. No meaningful discussion around acquisition strategy, growth challenges, channel ownership, forecasting, testing frameworks, attribution, or ecommerce performance. I also wasn’t able to get many answers about the role itself because those questions were deferred to the hiring manager. Overall, it felt very old-school corporate and overly rigid for a modern growth marketing role that should require deeper conversation around strategy, execution, and business impact.