I applied online. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at General Mills (Minneapolis, MN) in Dec 2017
Interview
I applied online sometime in September for the AMM position. In early November I received an email from General Mills HR to sign up for an interview slot for a phone interview.
The phone interview was a little tougher than I expected in that there were more case-ish questions around innovative products and approaching marketing problems than I anticipated. I'd say it was a 50/50 mix between behavioral and case questions. About a week later I learned that I was invited to final interviews at General Mills' offices in Minneapolis.
Before your final interviews you need to complete a Hogan Personality Inventory and a deductive-reasoning test. Deductive reasoning test was very reminiscent of the Verbal section from the GMAT, and similar to the GMAT the limited time factor was a large component of the difficulty. Make sure to allocate your time wisely and not devote too much time to one specific problem.
The final round is really well-run and a great opportunity to get a feel for the company and its culture. They fly you in the day before your interviews and you get to have dinner with marketers at General Mills along with your fellow candidates. Dinner was non-evaluative and I appreciated how candid and open my hosts were.
Interview day starts with a breakfast with more marketers for more frank, non-evaluative conversation. Then you go into the case portion. You get 75 minutes to devise a strategy around a scenario outlined in a packet of about 10 slides for a General Mills product. As a general tip it helps to have a strong knowledge of General Mills' brands (especially their major ones) because you can bring in that knowledge on the case and just to the interviews in general. You are given a laptop with no internet access to create a PowerPoint that you will present to a Marketing Manager at General Mills in one of your interviews. After 75 minutes you have a 15 minute break, and then you get printouts of your case that you can mark up for a further 15 minutes. My advice for the case is focus on the fundamental marketing frameworks (4 Ps, STP, etc.) and use your time wisely as the 75 minutes go by quickly.
After that is a tour of the office, which was a nice way to learn more about the company and its history and get a feel for its culture. That is followed by a lunch with a General Mills marketer. They were generally one-on-one or two-on-one so it was a great opportunity again to learn more about the company and just pillory people with random questions.
After lunch you finally get to the evaluative portion of interview day. There are 3 30-minute back-to-back-to-back interviews, generally with Marketing Managers. One of these interviews has you walking through your case. My interviewer would chime in from time to time asking about why I made a certain assumption or adopted a particular strategy. All of his questions and concerns were totally valid and I felt like it was really fair; at no point was he ever difficult for the sake of being difficult.
The other two interviews were a mix of behavioral questions and case-y questions. I didn't get any of the classic "Market share is up but sales are down; what is going on?" questions but did get asked for well-marketed products and trends in the general marketing space. I was also asked to walk through my resume and explain why brand management, why CPG, and why General Mills. All of my three interviewers were tremendously nice and the interviews were pretty conversational.
I interviewed on a Friday. That following Monday I received an offer. General Mills HR was great in terms of being transparent throughout the process and earn bonus points for being so quick to provide an offer (they told candidates to expect to hear decisions within 2 weeks).
Note: I was a campus hire (I'm a second-year MBA) and the interviews may be slightly different for experienced AMM hires. The case is the same for all AMM candidates, but I could see the experienced hire interviews being more technical.
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at General Mills (Golden Valley, MN) in Nov 2017
Interview
Was interview by 3 diffrent members of the Maintnence team. Each had diffrent questions and scenarios that come up in the maintinace field. Was about a 3 hours in total. Wrapped up with a walk through of the facility and got to talk to a maintenance tech about day to day expectations and work.
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at General Mills (Joplin, MO) in Nov 2017
Interview
A recruiter set up phone interview.
Reached by email to set up in person and get assessments completed
In Person interview with Team in Joplin.
Sent survey.
Waiting for Offer (I was let known during the in person interview it could be up to a week before a decision was made)