Interview Process: HR call, hiring manager, ~45 min online behavior screening, 4-5 hour interview, offer/feedback if no offer.
Most of the people at General Mills are nice and friendly people. Unfortunately for me, the hiring manager was not. This position was for an R&D Data Scientist role in the ITQ department. I got a good impression that the hiring manager was looking for a copy of himself, so I was surprised when I got the request to move onto the final round, which I should of declined and saved myself the stress and anxiety of an 5 hour interview. The position asked for someone with a data scientist background but what the hiring manager was really looking for was someone with a PhD in Chemical Engineering and any experience with machine learning, which was exactly the background of the hiring manager and some of the others in the team. It seemed that the hiring manager had also lied to HR on what they were looking for since HR really emphasized two very specific technical points about the position that the manager never mentioned in the interviews. In fact, when I had brought it up, the manager did not acknowledge those the two points. In the final round, 5/6 interviewers (people who were not the manager) were very nice and extremely clear on everything. Oddly, the manager decided to ask more technical questions when he should of been done asking them in the one-on-one interview rather than waste everyone's time asking them in the final round should I have answer them incorrectly/not what the manager wanted to hear as an answer.
I am a bit bummed that I missed my chance to work for General Mills, but I probably dodged the bullet here since the hiring manager was not someone I would of worked with for long.
The good thing about General Mills is that HR will contact you by phone if you have been rejected after the final round and provide feedback.
Advice: If you are applying for this role/team and there is an optional PhD requirement, stay away unless you have a PhD in Chemical Engineering. (The Senior R&D Data Scientist position requires a PhD in Chemical Engineering so if you got hired for this role, I suggest you transfer to a different department because this role seems like a terminal position for non-PhD employees.) I've worked with a lot of science PhDs in the past and I got the impression this manager is someone who looks down on people with lower degrees. Also, this role pays $30k-$60k less than the Data Scientist role in the other departments but asks for the candidate to do and know x2 more.
