Insider Q & A: Rebecca Warren On Working & Getting Hired at General Mills

Rebecca Warren is a Recruiting Manager at General Mills where she hires for positions ranging from Finance, IS, Sourcing, and Global Business Solutions to Aviation and Health Services. She’s worked in recruiting for over ten years and currently focuses on “experienced” hires – or those candidates who have between three and 20 years of work experience.

We asked her to go beyond Cheerios and Yoplait to tell us more. She did.

You call General Mills “a big company with an entrepreneurial feel.” Can you say more about that?

Over the course of my career, I’ve worked in a variety of  environments – from non-profits to large corporations. I’ve found General Mills to be a big company with the opportunity to take the initiative as if you were working in a small company. It’s an action-oriented organization where we believe if you take care of the people and take care of the brands, the rest will take care of itself. 

We have a very open, relationship-based culture here in Minneapolis; in fact the area I work in is whatwe call  FUSE – Flexible User Shared Environment. It’s an open office space with sit to standing desks, cubes, a focus zone (with no phones), and a team table for groups to sit together. There are no assigned desks, so you  can work in a space that makes sense for you and that suits you for the day. It’s great.

Every single person that we talk to is a potential customer, so our goal is for our process to be as pleasant as possible, even if we aren’t able to work with each other at the time.  

General Mills has over 35,000 employees worldwide with global brands from Pillsbury and Cheerios to tapas in Argentina.  How does a candidate get your attention as a prospective employee? What do you look for? 

We actually have more employees  outside the U.S. than inside, so we have a global focus in our hiring. We look for individuals who bring a global perspective.  We are a matrixed organization with a lot of different  functions, and people need to be very collaborative. We look for candidates with a global and strategic focus  those who can see the big picture as well as their day-to-day role.

How does that person stand out to you?
 

Typically there’s a mention of partnering, working with colleagues, and communicating across functions in the resume.

You can also see it when a candidate demonstrates their ability to communicate online. A lot of people reach out to me via social networks.  It’s difficult to respond well to an email when someone asks me to tell them what positions they are a good fit for.. If someone says “I know what I’m are looking for and here’s what I can do” it’s much more effective because it helps us start a conversation. If you show me how you can  potentially add value to my organization, then we have a place to start. 

General Mills hires new employees for over a dozen different job functions – from Corporate Finance and HR to Marketing, Manufacturing, and Quality & Regulatory Operations. What types of positions are you hiring for right now?  And how do you hire? 

We have openings across functions right now. For experienced hiring, we currently are on track to fill about 250 positions this year. You can see our open positions at Jobs.GeneralMills.com. Right now, we have a lot of technical positions as well as many jobs open in marketing as well.
 

What’s your favorite part of your job?

There’s something different everyday.

I love the ability to partner with other people at General Mills. We are really relationship focused; I  connect with new people   all the time – even if we don’t work together directly  . We have a Caribou Coffee shop inside our organization; it’s busy ALL the time!

I enjoy having a variety of work, and love working in the FUSE workspace environment. We have a GREAT recruiting team, and I learn something new every day!

Tell me about a recent hire. How did you meet them, and why did you choose to make them an offer? 
 

I recently hired someone we initially rejected. The first time we looked at her resume, it didn’t tell us much.
 

Then, we received a few recommendations for her, and so we gave her a second look. I called her, and within two minutes I could tell she would be a good candidate.

We give candidates for her position a couple of simplified assessments; we don’t give them many instructions. We want to see what they will do with it.

This candidate took the assignment to the next level – she came up with an innovative approach using a webcam, and three different ways it could work. She must have been up all night putting it together! We were blown away; the work she put in said, “I listened to what you need, I understand, and I am the right person for this job!”

It was fun to give her an offer!
 

Do you use social media to engage candidates? What’s the best way a job search candidate can engage with you during the hiring process?

Yes, we use social media a lot. The best way to engage us is to start a conversation. A recent candidate started a conversation by saying, “Hey, I just got a chance to come in and interview, what should I know?” That was actually really fun. As a member of the recruiting team, I put myself out there on Twitter. I don’t just talk about jobs. You shouldn’t either. Don’t be afraid to ask about the company and culture. We want people to have as much information on what’s it is like to work here as they do about the job we are trying to tell them about!

Do you have any “never do” tips for individuals for working with recruiters? 

Don’t forget to share your contact information. Put your phone number and email in every single communication that you send to a recruiter. If you save time so I don’t have to look for your information, it makes it much easier for me to give you a call back.

Any common assumptions job seekers make when applying to General Mills that they shouldn’t?
 

General Mills was founded in 1928. Because we have been around for years, people sometimes assume we are a slow moving, big corporation. But we aren’t. And we work in innovative ways. For example, we now open source a lot of our innovation with our products – we want people’s ideas on what we do – and how to do it.

Are there any questions that I haven’t asked that I should be asking? 

Is there a perfect General Mills employee? No, we look at people with all different backgrounds. My education is in Youth and Family Ministry. Is that typical? No.

We are a consumer packaged goods (CPG) company, but we don’t just hire people with a CPG background. We hire people with skill sets that can help the company move forward.
 

Use it now—actionable—advice for job seekers:

I think for candidates it has been tough for the past couple of years. The economy has made the market challenging.

Don’t give up on a company that you want to work for. Continue to follow-up and make connections. Keep getting to know people. Build relationships! I have hired candidates because of their interest in the company and their interest in staying connected.

If you give up and you don’t make that interest known – you are never going to get into that company.