Room & Board Interview Questions & Reviews

Interviewed Mar 2012 (took a day)

I was invited to a career open house to meet the leadership team at Room & Board. It was pretty much an informational meeting to learn about the position and the company and also for the leadership team to learn about the candidates. I was expecting to meet one on one with 2-3 employees from the leadership team, but it turned out to be a group interview (the candidates were split up into 2 groups with 2 employees in each group.)

Candidates were asked several questions in a group setting that lasted about an hour. Although the employees were very nice, listening intently, smiling, laughing when someone made a joke, nodding their head in approval, the feeling and impression I got was one of superficiality. In a group or panel interview such as this one, the employees only have an hours time to judge a "book by its cover" and be able to quickly decipher accurately which candidates would move on to the next step in the interview process. Some of the candidates were very polite and kind and offered answers to questions on what they thought the employees wanted to hear. Also, several of the candidates provided the same answers to the questions asked. The strange part of all this was that everyone was trying too hard to be polite to gain approval or consensus from the employees and to shed themselves in a positive light. The answers from most candidates were the same answers. It was very superficial.

My overall impression of the whole experience was that the leadership team was looking for a design associate who would "conform" to their rules, standards, and culture suppressing individuality and creativity. The candidates obviously wanted to advance forward in the interview process (because jobs appear hard to come by these days) and wanted to make a good impression and therefore offered answers they felt that the employees wanted to hear. As one design associate employee mentioned in their review of working at Room & Board, the "flat" structure is more political than actual corporate entities. I can get a sense of how political it would be working for Room & Board after going through this group interview session. It was a good experience to attend the career open house to learn more about the company and the employees. I really do like the mid century furniture with its clean lines and beautiful colors at Room & Board, but after reading yelp reviews online about bad customer service experiences from customers, bad delivery, poor quality of the furniture, and after attending the career open house, I was relieved to find out that I didn't advance to the next interview process (a phone interview). As a highly creative person, my skills, talents, efforts, value, and time are better used elsewhere where individuality and creativity are embraced, not suppressed.