McMaster-Carr interview questions

Interview process took about a week and a half. I was contacted by a recruiter who found my resume through Monster. First interview was over the phone, and consisted mostly of questions about my background, and information about two positions that I may be interested in. I was asked several questions regarding my college education, including why I picked the schools I did, and what my grades were. Having a high grade point average, and having quantitative indicators of success in your work seemed to be very important. I was also asked about a gap in my resume, in which I did not list any work experience for one year. I had worked low-level retail and serving jobs during that year (a gap year between undergraduate and graduate school), so I typically leave those off. I was asked to send the recruiter an updated resume that included this work experience. This surprised me a bit, as this is the only time an interviewer has ever asked me about that gap year. I was then called several days later asking if I would like to come in for an in-person interview at the Warehouse/Headquarters. I was told ahead of time it would last a few hours, which it did. I received a tour of the Warehouse and some of the offices, and then interviewed with three recruiters individually, one after the other. Each person asked me fairly similar questions, once again about my education, and also more about my future professional goals and how McMaster would fit into them. They also asked me more about my hobbies and interests. Additionally, the second interviewer also had me do an exercise in which I read an email from a customer describing an object they were looking for, and I had to find it on the company website. It was pretty intuitive and common sense, nothing difficult. In this second round of interviews, there was a lot of time to ask questions. They seem to find curiosity to be extremely important, and they were very receptive when I asked detailed questions about this position, and also about their backgrounds and why they worked there as well. I did also ask about company culture there, and one of the recruiters herself acknowledged the many negative ratings of the company on Glassdoor. Her and the two other recruiters each had the same descriptions of McMaster as having a "work hard, play hard" culture. Everyone in the Merchandising Coordinator position typically works individually, and the company wants everyone extremely focused and productive on their work when they are there. However, as many other readers of these reviews probably knows by now, the company has excellent benefits and salaries for employees, and they encourage a thriving work/life balance. A few days after the Warehouse interview, I received a call with a job offer. Despite the position not being exactly what I would like to do professionally, and the company having a plethora of negative reviews on here, I will probably take the position. The pay and benefits are really tempting, and maybe I'll learn some new things. I'm anticipating working there for as long as I can stand it, or until I find a decent paying job in my field.

A McMaster-Carr recruiter called me out of the blue. We talked briefly about what I am looking for in a career change, she goes over McMaster-Carr, then we scheduled a phone interview for the following week. The phone interview was about 45 minutes of the recruiter asking me to go over my resume and she asked questions about my experiences. I was told right away that I passed the phone interview, and we immediately set up an in-person interview about 2 weeks out. My day started out with filling a form at the front desk with information about myself, salary expectations, my high school and college information and GPA, and my work experience including salary information. The first interview was a 2-on-1 interview with two HR folks. They asked me to tell them about myself, asked me what I think the job was, asked me what I was looking for, and then they asked me questions related to my experience. The next round was a tour of the office and warehouse with someone who was hired into General Management. The tour was very interesting, and my interviewer did a great job of explaining what the different departments of the company did. Like other reviews say, this is a walking interview. The next interview was with a director. This conversation I did not walk away feeling good about. He challenged my resume content in a way I found to be rude ("Would you really say you did ___ at company X?"), and he did not seem interested in being there. He would ask me a question, and before I would be able to finish my answer, he would interrupt me and ask me another question. He asked me 3 questions related to my experience, and 1 questions about what I would change at McMaster-Carr. The following interview was the lunch interview. It wasn't really clear to me what the purpose of this interview was, and it was very awkward. It was a 2-on-1 interview, with one person from Systems and one person from Management. One person showed up late, after the first person and I had already finished half of our lunch by the time the second person showed up. The two people did not know each other, which added to the awkwardness. The first person was pretty quiet and I felt like I had to try and make conversation, to the point where it felt like a reverse interview. With about 15 minutes left of lunch, the two individuals decided to ask me about my experiences, my interests, what I'm looking for, and what I do at my current job. The final interview was with HR again. We talked about how my day went, and went through a couple of behavioral questions. Overall, almost everyone was nice and the day went smoothly. I wasn't a fan of the interview with the director and the lunch was really awkward. It's really a fit thing, and I encourage everyone to check it out and see what they think. For me, I couldn't see myself getting excited about working there, but it doesn't seem as bad as some of the other reviews on here read. Waiting to hear back from HR.