Kellogg Senior Financial Analyst Interview Questions & Reviews

Interviewed Jun 2011 in Englewood, CO (took 2 days)

The Kellogg's office in Ohio started contacting me about potential interviews in May 2011. I had a half hour phone interview with HR, filled out an online application from their website, and then had another half hour phone interview with the hiring manager. At this point the HR woman from Ohio called and said they would like to schedule an in-person interview in 2 weeks time. I was then sent a generic confirmation email with attachments for travel reimbursement (?), reasons to work at Kelloggs, and most specifically, how the interview would be structured. I was instructed to put together a powerpoint presentation on myself, which would last 15 minutes. There was no mention of whether there would be overhead equiptment available for this, but that copies should be brought for everyone in the panel. So that is what I did-- I spent 2 hours following the guidelines and listing who I was, why I was great for this job, my experience, etc. When I arrived at the interview, the two people on the "panel" could not have looked less interested in what I had to say. One of them was actually the hiring manager whom I had already discussed all of this with on the phone. After the awkward 15 minute presentation, these two were also the same people who proceeded to grill me with out-of-the-box HR questions that they were reading off a packet of paper. "Name a time in your life when youlet someone down and how you handled it..." And so forth. It was an awful interview, poorly set up probably because the HR department is in Ohio and the people in the actual place you are interviewing seem to have no idea how to react to the "15 minute presentation of yourself". It was awkward and I was not surprised to receive a generic rejection letter a week later. If you are applying for this position I suggest you ask for clarification on what they are expecting from your presentation. It was a Finance position, I know powerpoint well, and have specific experience that matched the job description. ... maybe they wanted some out of the box original spiel? If so, they would have still followed it up with the unoriginal HR questions that tell no one anything about your qualifiacations.