I applied online. The process took 5 days. I interviewed at Panda Express in Sept 2014
Interview
Hiring staff was very quick to schedule interviews. 1 day after submitting my app, HR manager emailed to setup video interview via HireVue. 1 day after I completed my video interview, HR manager called to schedule a phone interview. After the HR phone interview, a local Area Coach called quickly to schedule an in-person interview, then his supervisor called to schedule another interview the following day.
Typical questions: strengths, weaknesses, why Panda Express?
Area Coach talked about great training via Landmark Forum seminar/workshop. I Googled Landmark Education after the interview and started to get weird vibes. Area Coach conducted a fairly open, 2-way conversation, rather than a 1-sided interview. He asked a few STAR questions.
My salary research online suggested that the pay would be good, the work would be hard, and the environment would probably be good, but busy. I decided that I didn't want to go through the "Panda Experience" of working 5 hours at a restaurant (I assume that this would be unpaid work) because I did not want to run the risk of running into somebody that I knew and jeopardize my current job.
The Area Coach hinted that Panda USED TO only promote managers from within and new prospective managers would have to start out at a lower position before they can become restaurant managers. I wasn't looking forward to a pay cut...so that's another reason that I withdrew my application.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What do you think a workday is like for a manager?
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Panda Express (Mason City, IA) in Jan 2021
Interview
I was reached out to over Indeed to interview over Zoom. I then had a 30 minute king interview with a recruiter who’s been with the company 19 years. She was a great interviewer. She asked me to describe my coworkers and then asked me what I’m doing to improve them. Her interview tactic is basically for the applicant to dig themself in a hole and then have a satisfactory response to dig themselves out. It was a good interview but my current role has the title “leader” instead of Manager and she says “so you’re not even a Manager?”....
I applied online. I interviewed at Panda Express (New York, NY) in Oct 2020
Interview
Virtual interview with Zoom meeting, we went through a couple of questions regarding current and previous job experiences and HR introduced me with the structure and working experiences in Panda Express to me. It was smooth generally.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Panda Express (Dallas, TX) in Nov 2019
Interview
I got an email from the Panda and scheduled a facetime interview. About a week, I got a call from Panda and scheduled an in-person interview. At the end of the interview, we scheduled an on-site preview interview. I like people from Panda very much. It was a great interview experience. Thank you for the chance.