*Heads up to everyone - they seem to have changed their interview process over the last year or so, as well as their demographic. A detailed review of the panel interview will be below.
I started with a phone screening, the gentleman sounded rather unprofessional in my opinion. A little hard to understand. He asked some basic questions relating to sales, although it seems like the job is not very sales oriented. One question in particular was name a time when you went above and beyond to help a customer. A rather long time went by before I heard back, maybe a week or 2.
They sent me an email to complete a "virtual job tryout". It's really just an online assessment to see how you would handle certain situations. They give you an example situation and you rank from most likely to least likely the steps you would take to handle it. One example in particular was, "You witness two people buying tobacco products. One is purchasing your brand, and the other is purchasing a competitors." Then you rank if you would applaud the first customer for your brand, inquire the second customer what he liked about his brand, etc. It took probably 3-5 weeks to hear back, I was actually concerned they didn't receive it.
My final step was a panel interview, which I thought was odd because I only spoke to one person. They even asked me in the panel interview how the video interview was, and I had to explain to them that I didn't even have one (we were both confused). They will fly you out to the nearest hub; I am in Indianapolis and they flew me to St. Louis. They put you in a pretty nice hotel, although it did not offer a shuttle service so I had to uber there and expense it (a little annoying, but fine). I was a morning group, so I had to meet someone in the lobby at 7:30 am, she even changed the meeting location last minute.
Every other review said an "old smoking white boys club" which is what I expected. There are 2 rooms, with 2 individuals in each room. 3/4 of the individuals were women, and none of them were over the age of 40. Each room will discuss 3 out of 6 of their "values". They are Strategy Development, Driving Execution, Leading Change, Credibility, Trust, and Talent.
The rooms were actually very casual and relaxed, much more like a conversation than interview. (One woman was smoking an E-Cig during the interview.) They did mention their "four P's" but didn't ask me about them, they are Product Promotion Pricing and Presence. When asked about Strategy Development, they really enjoyed my answer of the process Assess the situation, development alternatives, evaluate alternatives, develop strategy to implement alternatives. For Driving Execution, I used Why (why is it important in the first place?), How So (how is this new process different and better?), and How To (how to implement this new strategy/idea while aligning with personal and company values?). Leading Change didn't really come up exactly but google John Kother's Leading Change steps, there are 8 steps to successfully lead change.
Credibility, Trust, and Talent Development are just easy STAR questions. If you don't know STAR the recruiter will review it with you on a phone call prior to the panel interview, but google it as well. I am a recent college grad that did ROTC, they didn't ask really about any prior sales experience, just leadership and adapting to change. So if you're right out of school, you will be fine (I used college experiences and grades as examples).
Salary offered was 47500 btw with 15% annual bonus, it seems to be a little higher than previously.
IMPORTANT: I see all over this board and they asked me as well, "Why Reynolds?" I quoted the job posting where it said, "employees are invited to think and act boldly in order to ignite innovation and leadership." I proceeded to say I felt as though it painted a broader picture of the company as a whole and I was interested and eager to work for a company that invited it's employees to do so. They all seemed to really enjoy that answer.
