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      Taxonomist Interview

      13 Oct 2014
      Anonymous interview candidate
      Hoffman Estates, IL
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Easy interview

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Sears (Hoffman Estates, IL)

      Interview

      The process was a joke from beginning to end. Phone interview followed by onsite at Hoffman Estates location. The onsite location interview was the most depressing I've ever encountered. Once I arrived the HR woman told me that the attitude toward the perception of Sears as a sinking ship is just something you get used to, something she mentioned unprompted by anything I said. I met 3 people for one on one interviews. For the first, the nice but obviously overwhelmed manager asked questions along the lines of how I responded when things didn't work and the technology broke which seemed to be the theme at Sears, nothing works but we do what we can rather than attempt to fix it. The next manager I was to meet showed up 20 minutes late to a 30 minute interview and asked me such obvious questions as "What does taxonomy mean?" It is clear they interview a lot of completely unqualified people for the role. The final interview was with what would be my peers and was the most depressing of all and made clear why the taxonomy of Sears is such a mess. I was asked to classify what was obviously a bunch of garbage from a junk drawer into coherent piles. The objects were unsellable items, parts and broken pieces that would never be sold individually such as pieces of driftwood, buttons, a guitar pick and the top of a salt shaker. Once the task was complete the interviewers instead of giving me feedback on the classification used the opportunity to pay "gotcha" and tell me which objects I had misidentified. (No, that disk with holes in it isn't a button but a saltshaker top, etc.) At no point during this final interview was I asked any questions. I was simply told what an amazing job the team did despite having no actual authority in the department and that despite being sold the job as a downtown position, I should expect to commute to Hoffman Estates more often than not. Finally when it was my turn to ask questions, it was clear the department, despite be a joke in the industry, didn't see that it was doing anything wrong. There is no consistency on the website because there is no attempt at consistency internally and zero documentation. I was told issues are kept track of via "skype meetings." Even the manager and the team contradicted each other as to how consistency was maintained. At no point was I asked any questions that would demonstrate that I was a better candidate than anyone else that applied. Even the sorting task was misused, to ensure that the results were not meaningfully interpreted. A week after I was told a decision was to be made I was called to be told that my references would be called. Two weeks after that I only found out I didn't get the position when I was called by another department to interview for a different role. For the second role, despite making it to the final stage and positive feedback, I again never got a final word for the recruiter which I presume means I either wasn't hired or they lost my resume, each seeming equally plausible.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      What does taxonomy mean?
      Answer question