I applied online. I interviewed at Bayer (Leverkusen) in Oct 2014
Interview
The job add was on Bayer's careers page. I applied and two months later they emailed to schedule a phone interview. There was a week between the invitation and the call. They were punctual to the minute. The one hour phone interview was conducted by the two scientists involved in the project I would have been supposed to work for. It went well enough for being invited to Leverkusen for a one day interview. They offer to pay for the travel costs.
There, I was interviewed in sessions of about one hour by around 10 people, ranging from the boss of the branch to scientists and an HR guy. We were three candidates being processed at the same time. I also had to give a presentation concerning my scientific trajectory. There was also a lunch together with the other candidates where I suppose somebody was assessing our social skills, though we were not told that.
The questions were mainly technical and in principle an expanded version of the job add. Although they kept quite secretive about many parts of the job tasks. I also had to ask a lot of questions about the company. The big boss and the HR guy asked questions that should reflect the "corporate values" and also personality, like who is your role model, give an example of a situation where you had to be in a leading position, why did you choose to study what you studied, examples of Bayer products, explain yourself in two minutes, what are your hobbies etc.
In the end, I was called by one of the scientists after a week. He let me down gently and told me I did not really fit the technical and personality profile. Oh well...
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
List your biggest three professional achievements. (hard to answer when you're a team player)
Three rounds of interviews: one online HR interview, one online interview with the team lead, and one in-person interview with the entire team. The in-person interview lasts an entire day and is an intensive assessment.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How do you envision yourself five years from now?
Why did you choose our company?
When have you been at your most creative?
Recruiter initial phone interview, hiring manager phone interview, invited to give one-hour presentation on previous work, then did a one-hour behavioral interview with a panel of 4 people taking turns asking me questions.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
When was a time that you had to manage expectations of multiple stakeholders?
Behavioral based interview format conducted virtually. Standard for industry highlighting technical, critical thinking, and problem solving skills. Overall aligned with job description and role responsibilities. Multiple rounds of interviews required.