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      Genentech

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      Market Analysis & Strategy - Forecasting Manager Interview

      16 Aug 2016
      Anonymous interview candidate
      No offer
      Neutral experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Genentech

      Interview

      If you are interviewing for roles at Genentech, buckle up and be prepared for a very lengthy process. There is no hurry on their end and I would chalk that up to the company's reputation for being a top employer in the area. I had several phone interviews before getting to the onsite interview with several weeks of waiting in between. Phone interviews: First interview was weird because it's a third party interviewer that asks a preset list of questions and you can hear her typing up your answers. It's strange and impersonal. Another phone interview was with someone not even working with the team (former employee) and asking another list of questions but at least this one was more personable. You don't get much value since they don't work on the team and you have no clue who the hiring managers are. It's pretty vague up until this point. Questions focused on your experience and ability with strategy and analysis. Onsite interviews: Prepare to be there for the full day. It's long,it's grueling and you meet many people. They all ask the same questions, mainly behavioral. They want to know how you are able to work in teams, cope with difficult people/situations, prioritize tasks, etc. I found this to be strange since the only opportunity to showcase your analytical ability is in the case study of which is clearly a graph that only internal people can understand. Case study would have been better if you had a few minutes by yourself to digest it before discussing it. The other interesting component to the interview is the presentation. They ask you to prepare a presentation on a topic of your choice but it should showcase your strategy and analytical abilities. You present to people you interviewed with. The hardest part is that you are presenting at the end of the day when you're dog tired from talking to 10 other people. Overall I would say the experience was good to have under my belt. With the fight for talent in the area I wonder if they lose people for having such a prolonged process. You'll find yourself having to constantly follow up between rounds. While everyone was very nice and friendly, I questioned their setup while I was there. Like someone else pointed out here on Glassdoor, everyone seems to be in an office which felt very siloed and not team oriented. Yet most questions focused on your ability to work in teams.The atmosphere was also dead quiet and not buzzing with activity as I have seen in other companies. This may work for some but it is something to think about whether this is the type of culture you want to be in. It is clear they have a hard time finding people for these roles (they are constantly reposting the job) and I think it's due to their interview process and style. Maybe it's time to try something new.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Lots of behavioral questions - every interviewer will ask this. Be prepared with stories (STAR format) to address topics on how you work in teams, handle difficult situations and people, how you handle influence others that don't report to you, etc. There is one case study which you can't prepare for. Most of the interviews is smoke and mirrors - the interview you need to ace is the case study. Having one case study be the major data point is a bit ridiculous. I would say that if this is the most important criteria the team should think about having multiple case studies to give a better picture on a person's ability and focus less on the behavioral questions.
      1 Answer
      54
      avatar
      Genentech response
      9y
      Thank you for taking the time to leave this detailed review. We appreciate your opinions and insight about our interview process with our Market Analysis & Strategy group. Since you have covered a lot of points, we would like to take this as an opportunity to use your review to shed light on our process as it might be helpful to others. The interview process can vary by group and is ever-improving as we identify new technologies and methods to create the best candidate experience possible. We understand that with multiple steps in the interview process, confusion can happen. To address this, we provide our candidates with a point of contact throughout the process to allow them to ask any questions they might have about next steps or clarification. As we try to find the best candidate for a given position, the process can be robust and as mentioned with MA&S there are multiple steps. We feel that allowing candidates to talk to multiple people gives them a chance to be conversational and an opportunity to highlight different skills. We believe that diversity of candidates is benefited by diversity of interviews. We acknowledge that there was opportunity to improve on this and have taken steps to decrease the amount of interviews. Due to some roles having panel presentations/cases, it may initially appear that there are more interview slots than you really have. The Case study and the Presentation provide opportunities for you to showcase more facets of your expertise and competencies. Our interview time slots are scheduled to accommodate your schedule and the interviewers calendar, we try not to have the presentation at the last time slot of the day, but sometimes this is unavoidable. The purpose of the case study is to test a candidate’s skills in a real-life scenario. While some of the data we use may be internal, it is meant to be understood by all candidates (internal or external), so they can fully highlight their knowledge for the position. The case study is used more to evaluate a candidate’s analytical abilities vs. their industry knowledge. It is great that during your interview, you were able to observe our workplace, however, the layout of our offices does not fully represent our work environment here. While our employees may have their own office or cubicle to work from, we also have many other areas where employees mingle, socialize and/or collaborate while working. Each department or group within our company has the chance to give input on how they want their work area, because we encourage our groups to explore and implement different methods that would best fit their team. We are sorry you felt the experience was short of wonderful, but have taken note of your review and shared it with the appropriate people. We wish you the best on your future endeavors. Thanks again for taking the time to leave this review.

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