Bridgewater Associates Procurement - Sourcing interview questions

These people are CRAZY! Before the interview, I was asked to take a Myers-Briggs test. The in-person interview strategy included 1 hour sessions with 5-8 people. One person's interview is intentionally designated as Confrontational - designed to provoke the interviewee to anger. My headhunter was prohibited from letting me know this in advance. The entire day is recorded and you are forced to sign an incredibly one-sided NDA permitting BW to do whatever they wish with your interview tape. I interviewed with 3 permanent employees and 2 who were temp's (flying in from other states once a week and put up in hotels by BW). The temp's were clearly going to be displaced by the new hire. Once off camera in the lunch room, one of the temp's told me to "think very carefully" about whether I wanted to work at BW. This temp was the only one who seemed to have any relevant experience and not a BW zombie. None of the permanent employees seemed to have a clue about basic procurement strategies. All of the permanent employees were odd, zombie-like people who spewed lots of the corporate phrases like "radical need for the truth" and spoke of Ray Dalio like he was a demi-god. Given all I had heard about BW, I was very unimpressed with the low level, unsophisticated nature of the procurement operations. Someone who had no knowledge of my commodity area was tasked with asking me a lot of specific questions that they themselves did not know the answers to. Several people mentioned the work hours are 8am to 8pm EVERY DAY. I was very clear that I would NEVER work those kind of hours every day. Also, I noticed in the lunch room that the average employee age seemed to be low 20's -- making the place feel very unprofessional and college dorm-ish. As a mid-career professional, I felt really old. The confrontational interviewer was really young (28-30 years old) but was the highest ranking person in the group. She had been at BW her entire working life and clearly didn't know much about procurement either, but she was very well versed with the cult-like BW confrontational game. Oddly enough, BW thought the salary was really high, but it turns out it wasn't. The day after my interview, my headhunter told me that BW decided to withdraw the position listing. Later, I noticed a similar position announcement with $30k added to the salary. Unless you are interested in being lobotimized, AVOID this company - it is the Stepford Wives corporate equivalent!