Hamilton Group Interview Questions
& Process

The whole process was pretty fast. It started with a phone call with HR, then a video call with the hiring manager, and finally, an in-person interview where I met with multiple teams on the same day. They asked a lot of scenario-based and behavioral questions.

I had a phone screen with HR first. Then I had a bunch of in-person interviews with people in the department. The first one was with the marketing manager. The second interview was with the VP of Sales and a Market Segment Leader. The third interview was with a Product Manager and the VP of OEM. Lastly, I interviewed with the CEO.

I got contacted by this company in early January about a Senior Commodity Manager role. The whole process took five weeks and I had 10 interviews with 9 different people. It started with a recruiter call, then I spoke with the hiring manager, who is the Director of Procurement. After that, I went in for a full day of interviews. It was supposed to be six hours with six new people plus the hiring manager again, but one person was out sick, so it still took six hours. I met with people from engineering, including the Senior Electrical Engineer and the Director of Engineering, as well as procurement and supply chain folks, and the HR Director. The next step was supposed to be an interview with the Operations Manager, which happened two weeks later. She said she had already spoken with everyone else and they were impressed with me, and that she would recommend an offer. But, about fifteen minutes after that, things changed. The HR contact emailed me saying the Operations Manager suddenly wanted three references. I sent those in after checking with HR. Then, a few minutes later, they wanted me to interview again with their Demand Planning Manager because the Operations Manager had some 'technical' questions she forgot to ask. This last interview was weird because there weren't many technical questions, just one about MS Access and one about MS Excel. They asked about my hobbies too, specifically why I don't build my own PCBs, which doesn't make sense for complex boards. Shortly after, I was told I wouldn't be moving forward because of a lack of 'technical knowledge', which was odd since it was almost three weeks after I last spoke with anyone technical. Something that came up a few times was my history of only staying at jobs for about three years, which seemed to bother some interviewers, especially the last two.

The interview process was quite sensible, although it took a considerable amount of time from application to the final decision, spanning over two months. It included a phone interview, a remote chat, a coding assignment to be done at home, followed by a live interview featuring a whiteboard task, and concluded with another remote chat with the department lead. Everyone involved was very pleasant, and I found the questions to be engaging, not overly difficult but not too easy either. There were no issues with either HR or the technical team. Ultimately, the negotiation came down to compensation; the offer was significantly lower than my current salary and not competitive at all, even less than my starting salary in Switzerland years ago. I expressed my willingness to accept if they could increase the offer slightly, and they indicated they would look into it. Three days later, they presented the final offer without any increase. Curiously, the job advertisement reappeared shortly after I declined. It seems like an inefficient approach, as a recruitment process lasting over four months likely incurs more costs than offering a candidate a slightly better salary. My recommendation would be to discuss salary expectations earlier in the process, as it's disappointing to receive an offer that's 20% lower after dedicating hours to four interview stages spread across two months. The benefits package, however, was excellent, among the best I've been offered.