Sears Analyst Interview Questions
& Process

I was contacted by a recruiter via LinkedIn. They asked if I was interested, and after I said yes, they set up a phone screen with the Hiring Manager. The HM asked about my resume projects and past work experience, specifically how it related to this job. After that, I had an onsite interview with 7 people, mostly senior management. They asked a variety of questions, including mini-case studies and brain teasers. I think they wanted to gauge my fit with the company and my ability to grasp concepts quickly. The interview felt mostly behavioral.

The interview began with a preliminary phone chat asking basic questions like why I want to join the company. Then, I was scheduled for a reasoning and numerical test, which was supposed to take about an hour. It involved 20 multiple-choice questions sent via email, which I had to complete within the hour and send back to HR. These covered reading comprehension, verbal reasoning, and numerical calculations. I actually finished these in about 20 minutes but submitted them after 45. The HR person called the next day to set up the main interview at the Eatons Centre office in downtown Toronto. They also gave me a heads-up on potential questions, like estimating the number of gas stations in Canada and explaining my thought process. On the interview day, I met with two panels. One focused on behavioral questions, and the other on analytical ones. The behavioral questions were pretty standard, but some analytical ones were quite tricky.

Found the job on my university's career center website and applied, feeling pretty good about it given my inventory background and business degree. About three weeks later, I got a call from an HR rep for a phone interview that lasted 20 minutes. She said someone else would call the next day, which they did – another rep interviewed me for about 20 minutes. After the weekend, I was invited to their Eaton Centre head office in Toronto for an hour-long analytical test. This test included math and verbal questions and was tougher than I expected; it took me the full hour to complete the 20 questions, even though I'm usually good at them. A few days later, they called me in for interviews. I had two back-to-back 30-minute 2-on-1 interviews. By the time I got home, I received a callback to come in after the weekend for the final interview. I got the job offer four days after that. It was a long process and definitely nerve-wracking, but a good learning experience.