I applied online and was contacted by a recruiter who asked me some basic questions. She scheduled me for an interview with two Area Managers.
I arrived shirt and tie, and was interviewed by two very nice people who really seemed to like their jobs. There were background and situation type questions, the standard fare. I then had to role play selling Monster energy products to an account. I really didn't want the 10 minutes they give you for prep, but I figured it was better to take it anyway... so I played Glow Hockey on my phone for awhile, because I knew immediately how I was going to approach this (I have been in sales for ten years). When they came back in, I worked him into saying yes in about 2 minutes and he ended the interview by taking me into a storage closet and giving me a sample of two new Monster products that were not on the market yet.
The next day I received a call for a "ride along" to job shadow for a few hours. I met with a local Account Manager and we went to a Walmart store, where we basically walked around for an hour waiting for a Manager to have time to talk to us. He showed me what they call the "Etch A Sketch" which is their CRM/Inventory system that does look remarkably like an Etch A Sketch. He showed me how to grab a vendor ID badge and we just moved a couple of pallets of Coke products and put up a price sign. He took inventory of current stock by looking at what was there and guessing how much of each product there was. He then placed an order for additional product as Walmart was running a 12pack promo. I asked him how he knew how much to order and he said it's really just a guessing game, you just don't want to order too much because the Walmart ladies in the back are rude and fickle, and don't like extra stuff laying around. He and I discussed car allowances and such on the way back, as it was not addressed during my interview. He also told me that at this stage in the game, you were basically already in the door.
After not hearing anything for a week, I left a message with the manager I interviewed with, thanking him for the opportunity and asking for followup to let me know if I was eligible for the position. I didn't receive anything back until about two weeks later, when the recruited called to tell me that they decided to go with someone else and they wanted to keep me on file. I asked her for feedback and she said she would contact the Area Manager and let me know. She did not do that, so I approached an Account Manager at a local Kroger a couple months later and asked him about the situation.
He told me that when you get to the ride-along the job is basically yours. He also told me that he had no idea why someone with 10 years of real world management and sales experience would not get the job because this was his first job besides throwing packages at UPS. I also noticed that he had basically no personality at all, which made me wonder what happened and what the real qualifications for this job are.
