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      Corporate Strategy Analyst Interview

      Feb 21, 2018
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No offer
      Negative experience

      Application

      I interviewed at PayPal

      Interview

      My experience with Paypal was disappointing overall. I was really interested in this role. But all the hiring manager did was ask me questions about blockchain. She asked no business case questions and didn't even ask why I was interested in working at Paypal. It was basically "tell me about yourself?" "What do you think about blockchain?", "Why hasn't it gained more widespread use?" and "what kind of blockchain offering does your company have?" Blockchain is really only tangentially related to Paypal. Better questions might include: where do you see the payments space going in the future? What recommendations would you have for Paypal's business as it relates to digital payment technologies? Finally, after she finished asking questions she allowed me to pose a few questions to her. She ended the call after only 25 minutes. How are you supposed to assess my competence for this role when you only ask these types of questions, basically only about blockchain? It's not like I ever claimed I was a blockchain expert. It’s literally only listed once on my resume as part of a broader initiative. Also, I thought an interview best practice was to try to standardize questions. I highly doubt she asked these blockchain questions to others. She asked nothing about specific skills, nothing about my interest in Paypal, retail, or the payments space. It's BS. This is a role that would be well served by adding a case component. Once the call ended I realized she hadn't even asked me why I'm interested in this role. Maybe I should have figured some way to touch on this before the call ended. But she ended the call sort of abruptly. In 25 minutes even though it was supposed to be 30. Maybe she had already made up her mind based on the blockchain questions. It’s just ridiculous. What is a candidate to do when they're not asked questions that really speak to their experience, interests, and knowledge of the space in which the company operates? A few days later I had to reach out to the recruiter to ask if they were interested in moving forward. She never bothered following up, which is so typical. I asked her for feedback and was of course ghosted. That's the standard nowadays. I just think the interview with the hiring manager wasn't well thought out. I've interviewed with Ebay's Corporate Strategy group and made it to the final round. They use case questions and I think that's a better approach, more so than asking questions that really reveal nothing about the candidate, their interests, and overall thought process. I literally interviewed with Nike a few days after Paypal and they had very preset behavioral questions which they seem to have given a great deal of thought beforehand. For example, “What should Nike do in X market?” What do you think of direct to consumer versus going through a third party retailer?” If you're going to use behavioral questions consider topics that are more closely related to Paypal's business than blockchain. As well as those standard behavioral questions: “Tell me about a time you failed. Name strengths/weaknesses.” It seems like the hiring manager just made the questions off the fly. One question about blockchain is fine but three is excessive. She should have ended that line of question after asking what I thought about blockchain. From a performance perspective, I don't think I could have done any better. But I wish I was asked questions that better showcase myself and my ability to actually do the job. I feel like with an interview like this I didn’t really have a chance to build rapport, exhibit my passion, or anything. I think it was an unfair process overall. Even ignoring the lack of standardization, I didn’t get to talk about the key drivers of Payoal’s business, my interest in PayPal or their performance, and the broader retail/payments space.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      what do you think about blockchain? tell me about yourself
      2 Answers
      23