This was one of the most long winded, and excruciatingly painful interviews I have ever endured. I was first contacted by Northwestern Mutual after they claimed my contact information at a career fair held at my college. Due to the displacement between my college (NY), and the office I was applying for (Boston, MA), I was first interviewed over the phone. During the phone interview I was asked the typical questions, greatest challenges, biggest failures, etc. After I passed this stage I was asked to come in to a group interview in their Boston offices. I drove the 5 hours from college to their office in Boston and waited in their lobby with several other current college students. Finally we were all ushered into a room with a insurance agent who didn't look entirely excited about the presentation he had likely given a dozen times that month. The presentation was typical of any insurance company, a general run through on the difference between term and whole life insurance packages. After about 45 minutes the sales associate handed out a packets to everyone in the room, and we were told that in order to move to the next round of interviews these packets had to be filled entirely. The packets consisted of ten forms, each of which were three pages long. A single form required you to call a friend of the family, a relative, a former associate - anyone within your social 'circle', and ask them a variety of different questions all of which pertained in one way or another to life insurance. I need not mention what NWM likely does with the countless pages of information they get from the people they don't hire. These surveys also contained a an additional page and a half of questions directed toward you about how you felt about the phone interview and other questions along that nature. The Boston office boasted that they were the only branch that required for 10 of these nightmarish surveys, and I overheard an applicant saying that another branch only required 2. After about 5-6 hours of actual work - plus another 2 hours at least for coordinating these phone interviews, they were completed. ( They require that you meet half these people in person, but since I was displaced from the area in which I was to be expected to sell they made an exception)

Interview process was robotic and not interesting. Met with the branch manager and the entire interview felt off and weird. Can't explain it but it seemed like the manager wasn't interested in anything I had to say.