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      Scientist Job (R&D) Interview

      23 Mar 2015
      Anonymous interview candidate
      London, England
      No offer
      Positive experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Unilever (London, England)

      Interview

      I received a phone interview that lasted for about one hour. The first 30 min was about checking my background and why I was considering moving onto from my current job. Questions were not too difficult regarding personal decisions and career move. Then, the next 30 min was about competency and behaviour-based, plus skills-based questions. For behaviours-based questions, think I gave logical answers, being true experience from work life. It ran into difficulties when asking my research and science skills. The interviewer obviously does not know anything about science. So I was asked to spell out every single technical terms for every single technique I have learnt. It hindered me to truely showcase my resesrch experience. This part of conversation almost paralyzed and it stopped me from telling the interviewer more of my research experience and skills due to the lack of understanding of the interviewer in the resesrch process. I mentioned "literature reviews" when answering one of the behaviour-based questions about "decision making" under Biased for Action. The interviewer did not seem to get what I meant. Then I needed to explain clearly what it means. Another crap was the interviewer was typing to record what I had said, making the whole conversation less natural and smooth, not like a conversation at all. It was because I needed to speak very slowly to enable the interviewer to have time to type everything, being very disruptive to the point of view of interviewee. It also made me feel a bit unease because of that. Sometimes, the interviewer kept saying "slow down, please". I need to type!!! In my opinions, recruitment and interviewing of professional science jobs in specialist fields should be carried out by the persons with a relevant science backgrounds, not by those admin people of HR. This kind of bureaucracy could hinder getting the best talents. All in all, it was a positive experience as at least I have learnt a lesson how to answer questions to admin HR people with no science background at all when applying for professional science jobs in speciality field. It is probably a common practice in industry during recruitment. That is something to bear in mind. That also means I am also qualified for interviewing an engineer for a specialty engineering job, though I don't have any engineering qualification and background at all.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Can yoy spell.........?
      Answer question
      4

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