Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Interview Questions
& Process

My overall advice is not to apply to any position with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of NC, unless it's your first choice dream job that you can't pass up on. I was interviewed 5 different times only to not receive an offer in the end. They will cause you to take off work and waste so much time for a position they may not even offer you. Also, prepare to be patient; the entire process from application to interviews, to rejection took 8 weeks total. I first had a 15 minute phone call with the direct supervisor for the position. She was friendly and the questions were basic (making sure I wanted the position/would be a good fit). The interviewer let me know multiple times I was on her list to move on to the next round of interviews and she really liked my background/experience. I was told I would receive a follow-up email from HR to set up another interview within the next few days. A week went by with no follow up, so I emailed to follow up. I was told I would receive a response within a week. Another week went by and no response. It ended up taking 3 weeks total. The next step was 4 different interviews via Teams. Someone from HR interviewed me first for 20 mins. Then 2 hours later one of their attorneys interviewed me (30 mins), then an hour break and another attorney and one of my future co-workers spoke with me about the job and the company (30 mins). Finally, another attorney interviewed me (30 mins). I found 90% of the questions to be standard/expected interview questions and most of the interviewers were friendly and easy to talk to. However, I was disappointed by how long they drug out the process and how many times it took them to interview me in order to make a decision.

My interview process started in mid-December and I had an initial phone screen with the Director and then the AVP a few days later. After meeting with the AVP, I was moved to the final round of interviews after the holidays. The third week in January, I had two-hour final round interviews in thirty-minute increments with eight people. The recruiter mentioned they had a couple more candidates and would finish by January 23rd. I followed up on February 2nd and was told the team needed more time to decide and would have an update in 7-10 business days. On February 19th, my Workday status still showed 'Interview' and the recruiter hadn't updated me. I sent a long email about my negative experience and their inefficient process, noting it shouldn't take three months to make a hiring decision. I bought a car faster than they made a decision. My last email on February 19th also went unanswered. I withdrew my application on February 21st, feeling my time wasn't valued and there was no communication. The Director reached out after my email to the recruiter about their decision, but I missed his call. I tried reaching him by phone and text but never got a callback. This experience shows me it's not a company I'd want to work for, and I now view the organization negatively. My advice is to have recruiters who communicate well, streamline the hiring process because it's inefficient, and for hiring managers to value candidates' time and communicate during the process.

The process kicked off with a recruiter phone call to do an initial assessment. After that, I was sent an online assessment to complete. The exercise was delivered as a Jupyter notebook and was designed to take up to six hours, though it shouldn't take that long. They send it out at a time you choose, and you have six hours to send back your solution. They asked me to confirm I wanted to proceed and to give them a specific time (and timezone) to send the challenge via email. The email included two attachments: a dataset and a Jupyter notebook with questions about it.

It took about three months to get through the whole process because of COVID and holidays. First, there was a 30-minute prescreen with the hiring manager. Then, a 1-hour virtual interview with a panel of managers from the department. After that, a 30-minute virtual interview with the Vice President of the Department. Finally, the offer stage. The process was long but really formal and seemed pretty important for the job. Everyone I spoke with, including the VP, seemed super smart, honest, and really cared about the culture and what's next for BCBS.