I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Groupon (Chicago, IL) in Jan 2012
Interview
I reached out to a recruiter via an e-mail posted on a job board. I was told to apply online, but about an hour later someone reached out to me offering a preliminary phone interview. After hitting it off with the recruiter in that first phone interview we immediately set up a second phone interview to talk more in depth about my experience. A lot of the questions were sales oriented. After the second phone interview I was invited into the office for a final round interview. In that interview, I did a role play with the recruiter. I was given a menu and had to pretend to call a restaurant, sell Groupon, and set up a sample deal. After that I talked with 2 or 3 managers that had openings on their teams. I later had one additional phone interview with the manager that eventually hired me onto his team.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The most difficult part of the interview was not necessarily a question, but the role play.
The interview process is very straight forward. First phone interview was 15 minutes just talking about past experience, why Groupon, why sales, etc. Second phone interview was 30-40 minutes with a little more in depth about experiences and how they directly relate to Groupon, sales/cold calling/account management, dealing with customers or clients, etc. Third interview was in person and that consisted of 3 interviews at about 30 minutes each. The first was straight forward, the second was much more relaxed and the third was very intense. A little bit of advice, always have some solid questions that are personalized for the interviewer, their region/day to day work/team. Also, be ready to sell yourself and talk about past sales experience, even if it's retail sales or restaurant work. Be ready to deliver a sales pitch or role play.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about your past sales experience and how you're going to transition that into a position at Groupon.
You don't have a lot of prior experience in sales, why are you considering this position?
Tell me about an experience that would most closely relate to the Account Rep position at Groupon.