I applied online. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Dyson (Bristol, England) in May 2024
Interview
Pre screening call followed by x2 virtual interviews.
Found the first interview quite disappointing, the person interviewing me didn’t seem to have much experience and it felt a bit awkward. Was suprised it was only 1 person doing this as usually 2.
Some of the questions were hard to interpret and I actually thought I’d failed.
But the second one, with someone more senior was much better and felt much more conversational. Felt really positive after he told me he’d be in touch to invite me to a final on site chat.
However I had to chase HR multiple times for a response as weeks went by with no word. Didn’t realise it at the time but Dyson were about to cut most of their UK jobs. So HR understandably had other things to worry about. They did eventually come back to me and say the job was no longer being recruited for. The fact they were still interviewing for roles so close to laying off so many staff suggests to me that either they just like wasting peoples time, or more likely that decision came as a total shock to most of the business. Lucky escape I think in hindsight!
Aggressive, rude an unprofessional. The recruitment process had 2 stages: an initial Teams call, followed by a face to face on site in Malmesbury 1.5 hours (job was to be located in Bristol). The initial Teams call was as you would expect, no complaints. The face to face interview was horrific. I was asked to prepare a 20 minute presentation on a scenario which I emailed over in advance. The interviewer was late . I was told I would be interviewed by 2 people, once we were in the meeting room, the other interviewer cancelled by messaging on Teams. The interviewer continued answering Teams messages for the 1st 10 minutes of the interview. The interview was all over the place. I was asked to start with my presentation, 5 minutes in, he interrupted & shared that the scenario was in fact a new programme that was at bid stage with Delloitte for dev & Accenture for test. The interview then became a workshop where we worked through the programme . He drew the proposed programme structure on a white boards & asked me to highlight it's weaknesses. When I answered , he became visibly angry and irritated. He then proceeded with competency based questions. He scanned through a list of 50 questions on his laptop & picked 4 questions at random. He complained about having to ask them & was clearly disinterested. He didn't really take notes. He did not review my CV. In fact, at the start of the interview, he confessed that he hadn't even looked at it. During the the interview he started that we would go through my CV later, we never did. I was left with the impression that there was in fact no permanent role & my interview was actually a means by which to obtain free consultancy. Dyson is heavily staffed by contractors working on site in Malmesbury. I suspect that there is internal pressure to replace contractors with permanent staff. I suspect my interview was a check box exercise to tick the box to say that they had interviewed for perm with no intention of ever offering the role. The interviewer was repeatedly rude and aggressive. The interview was booked for 1.5 hours, it lasted 2 hours
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Can you think of a time when you have managed an underperforming member of your team.