The Jackson Laboratory Interview Questions
& Process

I don’t usually write interview reviews but this one felt a bit icky to me. I interviewed with the hiring manager at the last minute (email was sent at 6pm for a morning zoom) and was asked questions that skewed more like a consultative session rather than typical job interview. When I asked the hiring manager what was her favorite thing about working at JAX, she gave a nervous laugh and changed the subject to ask me where I thought social media was headed in the next few years. Overall the interview was somewhat unprofessional and exploitative. Hope they enjoyed their free social media consult!

They were communicative and prompt initially. I quickly had an HR screening followed by three interviews with the hiring committee head, the committee, and the hiring manager. After that, I was given a take-home assignment with a tight deadline, which took up my evenings for the whole period because I work full-time. I didn't hear anything about submitting it until I followed up a week later. Then, I heard nothing else from JAX at all. It's a lot of time and effort for an unpaid assignment, especially to get no response. The assignment timeline and the ghosting are terrible hiring practices. I've told my network to avoid JAX, which is unfortunate because they do good work, but how you treat applicants, especially finalists, shows how you'd treat employees.

The interview process did not match the salary expectations of this position. I underwent an extensive interview process where I was being questioned about very specific and detailed information regarding experiments I conducted in undergrad. I was even asked to specify what kind of pipettes were used in undergrad. Which personally seemed a little odd. I feel that if I were someone who had no experience this would have been completely intimidating as they did not show any signs of willingness to teach or have employees grow. Entire process took SEVERAL months. By that time I had already interviewed 3x at another company and received an offer letter.

The interview process involved three stages. First, there was a recruiter call where they discussed basic job details and my familiarity with the role. Second, I had an online interview with the main hiring manager, who in my case was the professor. They asked about the experiments I've done, like PCR, Western Blot, and Cell Culture. The third round was an in-person interview with all the lab members and other professors.