Lincoln Financial Group Assistant Vice President, Human Resources interview questions

Short version: Lincoln's hiring process for senior hires is very slow and the final hire decision is heavily consensus based. The actual interviews weren't very technical or difficult, but because of the number of people that will weigh in on the decision they do not move quickly. Settle in for a long ride. Long version: The interview process is very long for officer level positions (AVP and above) and involves interviewing with individuals from a variety of roles throughout the organization. Particular emphasis on your potential work group and internal client organizations. In a counter-intuitive twist, as you get close to a hiring decision for a senior role Lincoln will schedule you for a 3-4 hour CI (Career Inventory) interview to review all your major career events to assess strengths, weaknesses, and ostensibly to develop a professional development plan should you be hired. Prior to this, my experience has always been that the interview process begins with this professional review. Decision making seems to be intensely consensus based for senior hires, so the more people you interview with, the more likely you are to run across someone who doesn't think you are a good fit. Particularly for roles with a complex skill set this makes landing the role very challenging. Your experience may vary, but in my case it seemed that there was significant misunderstanding (or perhaps opinions) about how the role I was being interviewed for should fit within the larger scheme. This makes satisfying everyone pretty tough. Process: 1. I was referred by a friend for the role I interviewed for. This got my resume in front of the recruiter and hiring manager. 2. The recruiter contacted me and arranged for a short telephone interview. This covered a very cursory overview of my professional history but seemed primarily focused on ensuring that we were in the same ballpark for compensation if an offer materialized. No one wanted to waste time on a lengthy discussion if the numbers were going to be way out of whack. 3. I was set up for a phone interview with a current Lincoln employee in the same type of role I was interviewing for. Interview began with questions and a traditional interview process, but gradually moved into a comfortable discussion about the role and my background. 4. Next step was coming to the Lincoln location for a round of in person interviews. During this day I interviewed with three individuals in the work group I'd be assigned to, one of whom was the hiring manager. Most of the pre-prepared questions were typical behavioral interviewing material, but for the most part the interviews were a dialogue split evenly between exploring my qualifications and allowing me to learn more about the role and the company. Following the onsite interviews I was told by Lincoln that everything went well from their perspective and that they would like to conduct another round of interviews to put me in front of several of the senior members of the Human Resources organization as the next stage. 5. Second round of in person interviews. Interviewed with four SVPs in the Human Resources department so that they could vet me. Three of these interviews were in person, one was over the phone based on schedules and physical availability. One of the interviews was well structured while the rest were more conversational and seemed to be focused on general fit. 6. Next I was asked to participate in a few phone interviews with other executives in the specific segment of the company I'd be supporting. This took about two weeks to set up, and another week to actually execute because of schedule availability. 7. Final step of the process was to come back to Lincoln (third round, in person) for the CI interview. This was a multi-hour session with an external consultant who did a deep dive on my professional history. I was assured several times during this session that this had no bearing on the hire decision and was instead focused on developing a professional development plan and to optimize on-boarding.