I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Publix in May 2020
No offer
Negative experience
Average interview
Application
I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Publix (Lakeland, FL) in Sept 2024
Interview
It was an unusual process. Since I didn’t get a chance to ask questions, I assumed they didn’t like me. All three interviewers seemed distracted during the interview, which was over Teams. The atmosphere felt off from the start, and I lost motivation to continue and try working for them.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Why do you think that you're a good fit for this role?
This interview experience was definitely one of the worst that I have ever seen.
First you will receive an aptitude test that is extremely similar to the average IQ test and that they use to somehow judge a candidate's fit for the position even though the questions could barely draw any parallels to the day-to-day responsibilities of the position.
After that, a phone interview is conducted and it is an average experience with some irrelevant questions that I assume all Publix candidates must be asked. The real issues began with the technical interview.
The interview consisted of two people, the hiring manager and another System Analyst. It is basically a barrage of technical questions that really didn't seem to entirely match up with the job description. Approximately 80% of the questions were related to database management and seemed to be geared towards a DBA position, which would be fine, if they were actually advertising it as such. The other 20% of the questions asked were related to the actual job description but were questions that really didn't seem to determine your software development skills. Rather they were geared towards how well you can remember and regurgitate specific syntax or if you can describe an incredibly dated technology that existed prior to the existence of the tools/technologies that they were requesting which I can only assume means that they are incredibly far behind technologically. To make the experience even worse, the interviewer was almost impossible to understand due to a very thick accent and I found myself asking for almost every question to be repeated due to that. There were also no questions asked about past experience or problem-solving scenarios (i.e. questions you would expect to see in any good interview).
When it was time for me to ask technical questions to the interviewer, it was very surprising to see that they were unaware of some the technologies/tools that they were asking for or just did not some of the most basic tools/skills this position should require.
Overall, this seems like a bullet was dodged.
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Publix (Lakeland, FL) in Aug 2015
Interview
The over all interview was easy but it almost felt that they don't need to hire anyone and just put the posting to see how many resumes they can collect. It may also be that they have an internal candidate but need to go through the job posting process with other external candidates to keep up with an image/company politics. Compared to other companies, their salary is also not very impressive and you need to wait 6 months before 401K match and 1 year before having access to stock option.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The hiring manager complemented my resume and went through it with me. Some of the tech questions had nothing to do with the position's job description/title but it wasn't difficult to answer. Over all, there was no energy and it felt like a waste of time.