Cargill Research Interview Questions & Reviews

Interviewed Dec 2010 (took 2 days)

After a 30 minute phone screen with the hiring manager for a research position, I was contacted via email about a week later to schedule a face to face interview at the facility. I had to give a short (15 minute) power point presentation on my experience and qualifications and then sit for two panel interviews with HR, the hiring manager and other researchers. The entire interview lasted about 3 hours.

The questions were pre-determined in some sort of interview handbook and were 100% behavioral - "Tell me about a time you had a difference of opinion with some one, etc...". Each question had 5 or 6 sub questions such as "what did you learn, what would you have done differently, etc..." There were almost no ad libbed follow up questions and a few interviewers simply read the questions off of their papers as though they were both uninterested and/or weren't allowed to ask anything else.

I was contacted to schedule a second interview a few weeks later for more of the same questions with other employees. Soon after that I was asked for a list of references which were contacted by phone. Five weeks and one follow up inquiry later, I was notified via email there were other candidates that more closely matched the qualifications.

Overall, the staff were very friendly and professional. Although there seemed to be an obsession with completing the official interview worksheet which disrupted the flow of conversation making for some awkward pauses as the interviewers tried to take notes on every detail of my answers. Some interviewers' insistence on reading every sub-question ahead of time gave the impression they didn't want to be there.