interviewing in 4 weeks for a supply chain planning role out of their US operations. would love to hear from anyone who's done the loop recently, specifically: how many rounds did you have what kinds of questions came up (case vs behavioral vs technical) how long did the full process take anything that surprised you
I've read that they use competency-based interviewing across the board but curious if supply chain is different from what digital/tech folks experience. feels like it might be more ops-case-study heavy.
5 replies
consultant_cam
did a supply chain strategy round about a year ago (not offer, I withdrew). 3 rounds. competency behavioral, one with an operations director that had a mini-case component, nothing formal just 'how would you approach X.' they wanted to see structured thinking but not necessarily MBB-style case format. more conversational.
firsttime_mgr
supply chain at IKEA is genuinely complex because of the volume they move globally. I'd study up on their supplier model and how they think about cost vs. sustainability trade-offs. those came up in my loop for a different ops role and felt like they were testing whether I'd actually thought about IKEA specifically.
market_realist
I interviewed for a demand planning role last year. 3 rounds, 4 weeks total. lots of 'tell me about a time you worked with incomplete data' and 'how did you manage a forecast that turned out to be wrong.' no hard case study, just behavioral with ops context. pretty reasonable overall.
ops_omar
that's really helpful, thank you. did they push on the 'wrong forecast' story in a critical way or more trying to see how you handled it and communicated it?
market_realist
more the latter. they wanted accountability and communication, not perfection. the interviewer visibly relaxed when I said I surfaced the issue early to stakeholders instead of trying to fix it quietly first.