In January I had my final round interview at the Zurich office. In total there are 5 rounds of interviews, three on the final day if you make it all the way, without elimination.
The entire process from application to final round interview lasted roughly 3 months.
The first round interview was a basic behavioral interview over Skype, what RBI refers to as the WHO interview. Here they want to get a feel as to if you would fit into the corporate values. They ask a lot of questions about your resume, accomplishments in high school, and accomplishments in university.
The second round interview was a week later over Skype and it was what RBI calls the CASE interview. Basically you are a pricing analyst for one of the brands and you have three questions to answer. In my case I was a pricing analyst for Tim Hortons. The three questions were the following: What are some of the factors that people take into consideration when they choose quick service restaurants? The next question was: What are different ways a pricing analyst can create a price for a new product? And the final question was regarding a profit maximization calculation for a new product in 4 test markets. Basically multiply demand by contribution margin, taking into consideration if the number of restaurants in the market is a representative sample.
If you advance from the second round RBI invites to fly you out to their offices depending on where you are in the world at that moment. In my case that was the Zurich office since I was in Europe on vacation. The final day was extremely cut-throat. On the day that I was there, there were 24 candidates in total. First there was a presentation regarding the position that we are all applying for. After that there is the first round for that day. Candidates are put into teams of 4-5 and choose a market that they want to play as. The objective of the game is to have the highest profit margin by adjusting product price, number of employees, and advertising budget. Here the moderators just want to see that you are a good team player, in other words that you communicate well – this entails listening skills and saying logical things when speaking.
After that we had lunch and then they put all of us into one room. Candidates were asked to leave the room in groups of 4. These groups were then allocated to different rooms where they were informed as to whether they advanced to the next round. A total of 16 candidates advanced.
The next round (4th in total) and second on the final day is cross-fire. 4 candidates and 3 mid-level managers are in a room and the managers ask questions. For simplicity sake I will outline the questions asked. Take this round as a game and be confident, by far this was the most provocative and ugliest interview I have ever taken part in. The questions are outlined in the questions section. After those questions they start pinning candidates against each other with the following:
- Do you think (candidate x) is humble?
- Who would you hire?
- Who wouldn’t you hire?
As a tactic be yourself, and do not attack anyone unless they said something absurd as in my case where one of the candidates broke and said that he likes McDonald’s more. In that case he is a safe answer for the ‘who wouldn’t you hire?’ question.
I advanced to the 5th round in total, third on the final day with only 6 other candidates. The final interview was a one-on-one with the president for EMEA. It lasted around 25 minutes and it is the easiest interview in the entire process. The president just wanted to see who you are as a person. Be confident in your accomplishments and what you value and you will do fine. After this you have to rush to the airport. In my case I finished my last interview at 6 PM and had to go to the airport to catch my 8.20 PM flight. Based on his questions I could tell that they want someone who wants to be in the organization for the long-haul and only that. You can be the greatest candidate, but if you dream big they don’t want that. So if you really want the job, emphasize this in your conversation.
In the end I did not get the position, but it was a valuable experience. I will note that some of the things that I found highly unprofessional with RBI are the following:
- Rushed planning – will not book your flight until a week in advance of your interview.
- Slow at replying to emails – usually wait at least a day for the most basic questions.
- An interview process where they want to break the candidate. Trust me if this is your first real interview don’t be worried, other job interviews blow this one out of the water. I can only conclude that if the interview process is like this that working for RBI would be no different- expect them to work you to the ground.