Oxford Biomedica Interview Questions
& Process

My interview with OBX included a brief screening call that I had to ask for since they initially just wanted to schedule the interview without any prep. Then there was one panel interview with the QC manager and QA Lead. They were both really nice and made it less stressful. Most questions focused on my resume and experience. Overall, it was a good experience interviewing with OBX.

Got a phone interview super fast after applying. Then they set up an in-person interview pretty quickly. The face-to-face was with two managers from the team, no HR involved. They wanted me to give a presentation on something related to the job. Later, when I called to accept the offer, the head of recruitment took ages to find my info. They asked if I could start within a week, but I had already told them I needed 6 weeks to move. The initial screening was outsourced to a really slow and bad company that wanted way too much detail and then took forever to do anything with it, even though they wanted info back super fast.

I applied to Oxford Biomedica and went through about 2 interview stages, mostly face to face. Sometimes I had to do a presentation, but usually it was a panel of about 3 people asking me questions for 1-1.5 hours. It started with the usual 'tell me about yourself and why OXB' questions, then moved quickly into specific techniques from the job description and a 'case study' type question, like 'what if your assay didn't work, what could have gone wrong and what would you look into?' It wasn't impossible to answer, but it's hard to know what exact answer they're looking for. They want to see if you can think like them, even if you haven't worked there before. The panels were friendly, the questions were tough, and the interviews were long (at least 1 hour), with 2-3 stages total. The biggest downside with OXB is they don't give any feedback, which is really frustrating because you don't know what you could do better next time. You might have three 1.5-hour grilling sessions and still get no feedback in the end.

I sent my CV and some short answer questions and surprisingly got an interview. The interview had a 5 min presentation using PowerPoint, followed by questions. I presented a paper in a journal club style, but others presented their own projects or their skills. The interviewers seemed unfriendly and not very receptive to my presentation. They asked follow-up questions about the paper, me, the company, and their work on lentiviral vectors. They seemed to be interviewing a lot of people that day for various roles, with at least 10 candidates for my specific position. It might be beneficial to have attended Oxford or have connections with the company. After the interview, there was a lab tour. Travel costs are not reimbursed, which is important to note if you're not from the South East.