Best Buy Interview Questions & Tips

How to Get a Job at Best Buy

Best Buy operates as one of the largest electronics retail franchises in the world. Consisting of over 1,000 locations across the globe, the retailer also serves as a large employer of entry-level workers and consistently needs to hire on motivated individuals.

Time Tables

The hiring process typically begins online with applicants submitting employment materials via the company website. Based on the information provided, hiring personnel select eligible candidates who best fit the descriptions of available jobs. Applicants may spend as little as three days going through the official Best Buy interview process. Employee referrals and solid employment backgrounds may lead to job offers in less than a day. Applicants seldom, if ever, spend more than a month going through standard procedures to obtain employment.

Entry-Level Hiring Practices

For entry-level sales, stock, and cashier jobs, Best Buy implements very basic proceedings. Candidates receive phone calls or emails to attend job interviews at a desired location and then sit with hiring staff through one or two brief sessions to determine eligibility. The entry-level hiring process regularly features short, 20- to 30-minute job interviews consisting of casual conversation between applicant and hiring person. Most hiring personnel take the form of direct supervisors or store managers. If multiple interviews prove necessary, applicants may experience the sessions in succession, which proves common at most stores.

30-60-90

Sales associate applicants benefit from previous work experience in the retail industry throughout the hiring process. Many Best Buy stores ask applicants how workers expect to contribute if employed. The most popular method of gauging dedication in prospective workers entails the 30-60-90 questions referring to where an applicant thinks she will stand with the company after 30, 60, and 90 days of employment.

Best Buy Interview Questions

Other common Best Buy interview questions include:

• "If a customer brought in a competitor's ad with a lower price on an item already marked down, how would you address their concerns?"
• "Can you describe a time where you had to deal with upset or irate customers?"
• "How has your work history prepared you for the position?"
• "What are some of your favorite pieces of technology?"

Professionalism

Remain professional while answering all Best Buy interview questions. Workers should dress in business-casual attire and show motivation and passion in order to make the best impression with interviewers.

Sales Abilities

Sales skills also prove important for aspiring employees, as the electronics retailer regularly encourages associates to up-sell items. Specific knowledge of modern technology and its applications, along with ability to provide sound recommendations and mild troubleshooting advice, pay exponential dividends for prospective workers. Applicants need to convey acute electronics acumen in plain and accessible manners to hiring staff.

Relate Past Experiences

Spend as much time elaborating on personal experiences using electronics as needed during each interview, but stay on-topic and remain focused. After completing all rounds of in-person interviews, candidates typically receive hiring decisions within a couple of days, if not before leaving the concluding session.

Interview Tips From a Best Buy Manager Video

Video Transcript

Interviewer: What qualities do you look for in an applicant?
Best Buy Manager: Product knowledge, being comfortable in front of people. That’s a huge thing in our interview process. If you clam up and shut down when I’m just asking you random interview questions, you’re not going to be able to really open up to just a stranger about their family plan or their phone or anything like that. So being comfortable in front of people, being able to communicate your answers effectively, and then also product knowledge – being able to know the technical sides of the industry.

Interviewer: What kind of answers do you look for in an interview?
Best Buy Manager: Me personally, I always approach with positive answers. If they ask you what’s a negative quality, almost spin it. A negative quality of mine is the fact that I am determined to get things finished. I need to get all my assignments done. Because of that, sometimes I’m late doing those assignments, but I like to have them finished. Anyone that can have a positive spin and then also direct answers. If you beat around the bush, then you’re not going to get anything accomplished.

Interviewer: What is one of the best answers you’ve ever been given in an interview?
Best Buy Manager: The question is: If you had to describe a cell phone to someone from the 1700s, how would you do it? The answer that we received was, “The easiest form of communication from long distances that you can imagine. Whether it was a text, a call, an e-mail, something like that going across various distances of the world.” Something like that.

Little things like if you were selling your grandmother a cell phone, how would you approach the sale? Because that’s a totally different answer than if you were selling to a 14-year-old kid, or a family plan. If you have five people that come in and they all want cell phones, but they’re on a budget, how can you get them all phones and then fill their needs for what they want to do with their device?

Little things like asking a person what they want. It’s one thing for me to say, “Here’s the phone you need. Here’s the product you need because I like it, because it’s the best thing out right now.” It’s a different answer when I say, “What would the perfect phone do for you? What do you want to get out of your tablet? How are you going to use it?” Just because that can totally change everything.

Interviewer: How can an interviewee tell if the interview went well?
Best Buy Manager: I think the reaction. When you’re sitting in front of someone and you’re talking to them, facial expressions, body language, things like that. If they stand up right away and shake your hand and say, “Great interview. Great to hear back from you. We’ll let you know really soon.” That’s a positive sign. If you walk out of the room and they’re kind of hesitant and not very friendly to you, you probably didn’t get the job.

Interviewer: What should an applicant do after leaving the interview?
Best Buy Manager: Do research about the company that you’re getting maybe hired by or that you’re applying to. The more knowledge you have about the company, its core philosophies, its job codes even, the better prepared you are. Also, things like pay grade. You can look up pretty much anything online nowadays. You can determine how much they’re going to pay you and use that to your advantage to maybe get more money from the initial hiring process.

Interviewer: What should an applicant do to prepare for an interview?
Best Buy Manager: Always, follow up is always good. A quick email, I think, is a great way to do something because you can get a message across but not seem overbearing or desperate that you need the job. Say, “It was great interviewing with you. Can’t wait to hear back from you. Would really like to be a part of your guys’ team.” Or something of that nature, or even a phone call. I think an email is a little bit more direct and seems less desperate.

Best Buy Mobile Assistant Manager Interview Video

Video Transcript

Interviewer: Please describe your job title and primary duties.
Best Buy Mobile Assistant Manager: I work for Best Buy Mobile. I’m the assistant manager. Our main duties are selling cell phones for all the different carriers, so Verizon, Sprint, AT&T mobile, quality prepaid carriers, as well. We mainly focus on upgrades, but we can do new lines, as well. So if you’re a new customer or an existing customer, we do plan changes. We also sell tablets, iPods, basically any small electronic you can take with you that’s portable, that you wouldn’t find at the main store, if you will.

Interviewer: What was the work environment like?
Best Buy Mobile Assistant Manager: It’s pretty cool. We’re on a team structure, so we’re not commission-based like a regular store. So if you go to a Verizon store, they’re trying to get the most money out of you that they can. For us, it doesn’t matter if you spend a dollar or 300, and we bonus as a team, so if we all hit our goals, then we all get bonuses.

Interviewer: What was your favorite part about working there?
Best Buy Mobile Assistant Manager: Probably just the interactions and networking involved, because everyone needs a cell phone, no matter what walk of life you come from, no matter what your position is. So, I get to meet guys running their own business or some guy who’s trying to get a dollar phone. Just the opportunities that come from that and networking. Also, I just like technology and staying on top of it, so it’s pretty cool that way, as well.

Interviewer: Please describe a typical day as an employee.
Best Buy Mobile Assistant Manager: I come to work, and depending on if we are having a sale or not, depends on the amount of traffic, but you usually come to work and train new employees or existing employees on sales technique and SOP – standard operating procedure. Then, either activate new cell phones, fix people’s cell phones, selling accessories like headphones, tablets, pretty much anything you can imagine at a Best Buy.

Interviewer: What questions did the interviewer ask during the job interview?
Best Buy Mobile Assistant Manager: The main thing was… obviously your personality in general, because they don’t want to just stick anyone in their highest grossing area of the store. If you are not very good personality wise, they’ll stick you in like the headphone section, and it’s pretty easy to sell headphones for MP3 players, something of that nature. But once they determine your level of sales, I guess how well you are at sales… and knowledge. That’s huge, because the technical industry, it’s constantly changing. New phones come out all the time, new plans change every six months, and we have all the carriers. So, you can imagine that when Verizon makes a change, AT&T makes a change, T-Mobile; they all try to compete with one another. So, it was just product knowledge, technology knowledge, and just being able to sell, really.

Interviewer: What set you apart from other candidates?
Best Buy Mobile Assistant Manager: I would say just having the knowledge beforehand. Like I said, I was really into technology, so for me, it was really easy to… I went in there and I was asking them questions about differences between CDMA networks and GSM networks, and they were kind of surprised and taken back that I knew more than the average person coming in. I could tell them about how I had personally jail-broken my phone or something like that, and a lot of them didn’t really do anything like that. When I got hired, BlackBerrys were still cool, and it’s like a thing of the past now.

Interviewer: What other advice would you give to a job seeker looking to gain employment?
Best Buy Mobile Assistant Manager: I think that you should do research before you go to any interview. It’s one of those things, where if you know something about the company, and you can ask them questions, I think they’re going to think that you actually have a desire to be there, a want to be employed by them. On top of that, I think that being in a team environment like that, you have to be good working with people, whether it’s the customer or other employees, because everything is a team structure, and if you have one weak link, obviously the whole team suffers.

More Best Buy Interview Videos:

Related Links:
Best Buy Application
Best Buy Sales Associate
Best Buy Cashier
Best Buy En Espanol