Fred Hutch Cancer Center Project Manager Interview Questions
& Process

I met one-on-one with the lead nurse for a specific part of the clinical research division. The recruiter initially sent me to the wrong building, which was a bit of a hiccup. Once we met in her office, we talked for about 1.5 hours. She began by asking about each role on my resume, focusing on what I enjoyed and didn't enjoy about each position, even though most of my past roles were from over four years ago. I was unsure if she'd ask general questions like 'tell me about yourself' or typical behavioral questions, so I tried to use the resume discussion to naturally transition into those topics. A surprising part was that most of the questions after the resume review were about management styles – what I value and dislike in a manager, and specific instances where managers acted in ways I appreciated or didn't. It felt like she was assessing our potential working relationship closely, almost like speed dating. She did ask the standard strengths and weaknesses questions, which felt more familiar. The latter half of our conversation involved her explaining their work and the practical details of the job, like sick leave policies, which I took as a positive sign. She mentioned that the next step would be contacting my references.

First, you'll submit your resume. It gets scanned by a computer. You might not hear back for ages, then boom! HR calls. HR sets up your interviews: one with your future team (about an hour) and one with HR to go over the details like pay and benefits. The team will ask you stuff that's typical for the job, but it's hard to know exactly what. Then, another long wait, you'll think they forgot about you, maybe months. Then, a second interview, maybe with more people from your team. Again, depends on the group. The whole thing takes forever, so you gotta be patient. You can bug HR, but be nice about it.

There were 5 rounds total, which could have been parsed down to 3. Everyone who I talked to was very passionate and open to talking about their experience at Fred Hutch. The clunky part of the process was that the recruiter had different coordinators scheduling interviews each round, and one of them addressed one of the emails to me with the wrong name. That made it a bit awkward when I needed to respond and clarify if they meant to send that email to me, or another candidate who was interviewing for the role.