The process was very fast and professional. They offer you a date and invite you to the head office in Munich. 12pm is quite early if you have to travel from afar. The whole process is very exhausting since they require a 1h computer test and three interviews, each with one consultant. The test was okay, they send a sample test in advance. I did certainly not manage to answer all questions but it is probably not possible anyways. Three interviews for 1 hour are quite demanding after a one hour test and I personally think that it is a little oversized for a 4 month internship. However, the worse was the atmosphere during the interviews. I have to say that I was not too keen to get the internship since I already had an other offer but wanted to check if Siemens might be a better option. The interviews are conducted by only one person not really following any obvious structure. Each interviewer had an other and sometimes unusual appraoch.
1st: Was only covering CV and personal questions. The person was constantly yawning since he had just landed at the airport that morning. Even though it is understandable it is not really nice in an interview. The questions were sometimes a little random and it seemed like he was not really interested in the answears but just wanted to ask interview-like questions like: Most difficult team-work, beahviour in a conflict, how to convince.. He constantly said 'understand' instead of 'Thanks for the answer' or 'I understand what you mean'. There was a little role play where I had to get information from a collegue who did not want to share the data. It was okay, but since he was part of the play and also the judge I am not sure how good this is for evaluating my performance.
2nd: Personal part and case study. Interviewer was extremly formal and not really approachable. The first part went okay, we talked about reasons for this position and my CV. The case study was a complete fail. I got a sheet with growth rates and quantities where some numbers were missing which I had to calculate. I am sure is was mainly my inability, however, it was also quite unusual since it was not really a case.
3rd: Personal part and case study. This person was a very strange character, however, the was the most unforamal, friendly and approachable person. He asked some personal questions like what my values are, my motivations to apply, why I went abroad and so on. The case study was again one, badly printed, sheet with predictions of sales of a business unit. I had to judge and calculate if it was plausible. I did not really understand what he wanted me to do and find out so it was more a try and error.
To sum it up, the process was well organized but the atmosphere and all people I met, except the lady on the reception, were fairly cold, formal and unapproachable. I would not want to work there nut some people might like to work there. Well, I was not surprised that I did not get an offer. My 2nd interviewer called me two days after at 9pm and gave me some feedback which I appreciate.
I think they should start to use consitent interview structures, maybe have only two interviews but with two people to make it more objective and less dependend on the individual interviewer. As I said, some people might feel okay with the atmosphere, I would not be able to feel comfortable working there.