Top 40 Target Interview Questions and Answers

What Is Target Corporation?

Target Corporation is a general merchandise store that believes in "Expect More, Pay Less." It was established in 1962 and is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Mr. Brian Cornell was appointed as the CEO of Target in 2014 and continues to serve as the chairman cum CEO of Target Corporation. Target has won the hearts of U.S. people by setting up stores nearly 10 miles away from approximately 75% of the U.S. population. 

As of 2020, they have achieved $93.6 billion in total revenue. Intending to help everyone, they have established 1,931 stores in the U.S., 51 supply chain facilities, 28 offices located globally, and 45+ unique brands owned by Target. Target Corporation also contributes to society by donating 5% of the profit to communities. 

Roles and Responsibilities Offered by Target 

It's essential to have clarity about the job role you want to opt for. While on the one hand, working in the dream brand holds significant priority, on the other, to work efficiently and achieve the goals, it's essential to understand the role you will be offered and the responsibilities you will be carrying. Listed here are the job roles offered by Target at the store and corporate levels.

1. Store and Supply Chain Careers

Nothing matters more than treating your customers right when they visit the store. Hence, at Target, every role is essential to serve every customer with 100% hard work and facilities. At the store level, you can explore executive and leadership roles like- 

• Speciality Sales: Persuade customers by working as a Visual Merchandiser and making the store look attractive at the same time.
• Service and Engagement: If you like to talk to people, this one is for you. Help greet the customers and get them to know better. If you choose this role, you need to build excellent customer relationships.
• General Merchandise and Food Sales: If you love numbers, choose this department. Ensure that the stock in every store is available in sufficient quantity and accurately priced.
• Support Roles: Create a healthy and comfortable environment for your colleagues by working in this role. Ensure that everything is intact and your employees are served enough benefits to stay motivated and focused on their careers.

2. Supply Chain Roles

• Warehouse Operations: Ensure cartons' productive and influential movement in the warehouse.
• Packing Operations: Speedy packing of cartons for a quick stock roll-out.
• Engineering and Facilities: Ensure safe and effective processes through general maintenance of pieces of equipment and building.
• Administrative: Distribute the paperwork for speedy data records, reports and invoices.

3. Corporate Careers

• Administrative Support: Administrative professionals who can bring ease to daily execution tasks. One will directly work with target managers, directors, VPs and their respective teams.
• Global and Supply Chain Logistics: Help team identify and align the speedy process of getting products delivered faster to maintain happy customers.
• Product Design and Development: Set no limit for your creativity by working with the product design and development team. Help create new product designs and improve the existing ones. 
• Project Management: Establishing projects, identifying the key market, escalating the tasks to achieve company goals — this team plays a crucial role for the whole organization.
• Business Operations: Lead with an entrepreneurial mindset and help the company develop and execute successful enterprise programs.
• Legal Affairs, Risk and Compliance: Help the entire team provide internal and external guidance in the law world. Specialization in global affairs, policy, risk management or employee management will help you get into this team.
• Finance and Accounting: If you are good with numbers and can help evolve the business, you should join the Finance and Accounting team.
• Technology: If you love computer language and coding is your favorite gameplay, then choose the technology team. You would be required to establish new website codes, protect internal data, and coordinate with other groups.
• Marketing: Bring in innovative marketing strategies to help grow the business. Help the brand expand its presence.

Target Interview Process for Software Professionals 

Now that you have clarity of which department you want to head for, let's dive into detail about some technical questions that might arise as per your chosen department. The technology department is the most challenging one; let's cater to it first. 

If you are planning to apply for a software professional position at Target, here are certain things that you need to keep in mind.

Step 1: Head to their website, and search for the jobs available in the market for software professionals.

Step 2: Check out the roles and responsibilities. If you qualify and are eligible, you can proceed to apply for the job.

Step 3: Share relevant details and your updated resume. 

Step 4: You might receive a confirmation mail notifying you that you have been shortlisted for further rounds. A telephone interview might be taken as well.

Step 5: After you clear the telephonic interview, the first introductory interview will be held with the team head and HR. 

Step 6: If you clear the first round, the team will share an assignment to better understand your work and skills.

Step 7: The final round will consist of a technical interview and discussions about your salary expectations, roles and responsibilities.

Step 8: After clearing all the rounds, you will be sent a confirmation mail along with the company's terms and conditions.

Technical Questions

Heading for a software job role will also require you to answer specific technical questions. Here are some of the questions that have been asked in the past, which will help you prepare better for the Target interview process.

Questions

1. What do you do to keep up-to-date with the latest technologies?
2. How do you make sure your code works?
3. How does your code make its way to production?
4. Do you use any tools that scan your code for defects/vulnerabilities?
5. How would you set up a warehouse shipping/tracking solution architecture to ensure the product is restocked at the correct stores.
6. How do you structure a database?
7. How would you build an online shopping cart?
8. How do you populate a list in C#?
9. What is immutability in Java?
10. What is a bucket sort algorithm? How do you use it?
11. What's the difference between path param and query param?

Top Target Corporation Interview Questions and Answers

With confidence and good preparation, you can ace Target’s interview. Here are a few of the vital Target interview questions. 

1. Tell us something about yourself.

Answer this question by sharing your current designation. Head to your educational experience and share your interests and hobbies. Share your skills and qualities that help you perform better.  

2. What do you know about Target Corporation?

Read our "What Is Target Corporation?" section to know all about the org. However, do not sound very robotic while answering this question. 

3. Why do you want to work at Target?

Share what inspires you to be a part of Target. Highlight the excellent service they offer, and mention that you would like to contribute. Don't forget to share your future goals and how Target can help you achieve them.

4. What are some challenges that you face in your current job? How do you deal with the same?

Tell them about your daily roles and responsibilities. Share how you schedule your daily tasks and mention 1-2 challenges you might face and the solution you have opted for.

5. Why should we hire you?

It's essential to prove that you're the most relevant candidate for this job. Hence, go through the job description thoroughly, and the skillsets required. Share how you acquire those skills and have been implementing them in your current job role. Since you want to learn and grow, you consider Target the perfect fit for the same. 

6. Where do you see yourself in five years?

Consider this as a question you would ask yourself and answer the same. In the next five years, you might see yourself in a managerial position. Hence, you must highlight that. 

7. What's your biggest motivation at the workplace?

This question is essential for an interviewer as it helps them identify that one core reason which drives you to come to work daily. Avoid saying things like money or appraisal. Mention qualitative things like- learning new skills, facing new challenges, and contributing in a better way to the company's growth.

8. Why do you want to work at Target?

No one will hire a candidate who isn't aware of the reason behind working at a company. Hence, you need to answer this question confidently. You may share how Target has grown in these many years, and you would like to learn in a growing company where you can sharpen your existing skills and acquire new ones.

9. Tell us about a time when you chose to go above and beyond your role and responsibilities?

This question will help them identify whether a candidate is capable of multi-tasking and facing new challenges without hindering current tasks. Be it a small event or a major one, keep a situation in mind and share how your contribution has helped solve a problem or improve the work.

10. Share any one mistake that you have made on a job? How did you deal with the same?

Human error is standard. It can be done in a starting or a managerial role as well. The main challenge is how someone deals with it. Highlight the problem that you might have faced. Instead of sharing that you got angry or panicked, share how you dealt with it patiently and came up with two/three alternatives to resolve the issue. Tell them how you discussed the problem with your team members and head instead of handling it alone. With the help of team coordination, you could resolve the issue.

11. What makes a good team member?

A good team member keeps a balance between personal and team growth. Hence, good team members maintain equality, show empathy, take charge of their work and support team members.

12. Tell us about a time when you disagreed with a team member? What was the outcome?

At this point, an interviewer will like to understand whether a candidate will lead to disputes in the team or will keep the team happy/satisfied. At this question, highlight how patiently you listened to other team members' opinions and came to a mid-point where both of your points were considered.

13. How would you decide what to do if two different managers gave you two conflicting priorities?

If both priorities are equally important, you will consider which one is more urgent instead of promising that you will be able to do both tasks. Discuss with your managers the priorities and how you will like to deal with them. At this point, it's essential to communicate.

14. What does your day look like?

The interviewer wants to understand what significant tasks a candidate can pick in a day. Hence, answering this question is essential. Share details of the tasks that you perform daily. To avoid confusion, jot down your tasks before the interview.

15. How do you motivate yourself to attempt these daily tasks?

Share how important it is to learn and practice a skill for a person to grow professionally. And that's the motivation you carry with you.

16. Share your three weak points?

This will help an interviewer know whether a candidate has opted for the proper role or not. For, e.g. if you're interviewing for a position in the PR team, you must have strong communication skills, but design skills might not hold that much importance. So you can mention that you're curious to learn design skills but weren't able to do yet. Hence, that skill is your weakness.

17. Do you prefer to work alone or with your team members?

This question is vital to understand whether you're a team person or a stand-alone one. Mention how in some tasks you prefer to work with your team members, while you also set a specific checklist for yourself while working, which you like to do alone.

18. How important is it to engage with other team members?

One can't stay limited to their team and work for the rest of their life. Hence, it's important to engage with other team members and know them better. It will help not only in understanding how different departments work but also acquire new skills and learnings.

19. What do you want to improve at Target?

This question will help an interviewer know about loopholes in the company from a third person. But it's important to highlight the problems positively. For example, you can say, “I think social media performance is doing well. However, if we bring in affiliate marketing, it might help us increase social media revenue which is not the focus right now. Hence, I would like to bring in my skill sets to initiate the same and help Target grow in a better way”.

20. Tell us about a time when you were innovative at your job?

This is important for Target team members as it will help them know whether a candidate can bring in any new innovative ideas to improve the work condition or add something exciting. Hence, share a loophole you might have identified in your current team and how you helped resolve or reduce the problem.

21. What are your short-term and long-term goals?

An interviewer will like to know whether a job role is doing justice to an individual's goals in mind. Hence, it is essential to share your short-term and long-term goals aligned with the job role. 

22. What do you like to do outside of work?

Target believes that every individual should have a life outside work as well and shouldn't stay stressed about work 24-hours. Hence, share your hobbies or things you like to do when you leave work. It can be as simple as hanging out with your friends or taking a stroll.

23. What's the one subject you have loved the most in your college?

If you're applying for a fresher position, they might ask certain things about your college life. They need to understand whether the career you're going to opt for aligns with your interest.

24. What are some of your leadership experiences?

A leadership quality doesn't necessarily develop with your designation or work experience. It comes from within. Be it at an executive-level or managerial level, highlight two or three experiences where you have taken the lead and guided your team members.

25. What do you like about your current company?

Share points which convinced you to join your current team. It can be good company policies, team unity, etc.

26. What do you dislike about your company?

Well, this is a tricky question. You will have to play smart here. Instead of listing down the disadvantages directly, mention that it's a growing company and every company does its experiments. You can also say- “Instead of highlighting the things I don't like, I would like to highlight the places where they can improve…”

Changing the tone of the answer will create a positive impact on the interviewer.

27. What are the specific things you expect after you join Target?

Highlight that you are expecting a space where you can learn new things, sharpen up your existing skills, and have a supportive team. A place which will help you keep a balance between your professional and personal life.

28. Share the achievements that you have gained outside your office life?

Gentle Reminder: You don't have to share your school certificates. You have to share if you have any hobby and passionately follow it outside the office world. 

29. Why are you looking out for a new job?

This is a question that strikes every interviewer. Instead of mentioning negative points of the company, share you would like to grow in your career and that you consider this is the right time to take a step ahead.

30. How do you evaluate your success?

Start your answer by mentioning that you have set your own KRAs considering primary company objectives. You have divided those KRAs on a daily/weekly basis. After a point, you evaluate those points and major the success at your workplace.

31. What do you like the least about your job?

Here, instead of highlighting negative points about your current job, share the opportunities or skills you would like to explore. E.g., “While in this job, I can handle social media accounts for two brands, but I am looking forward to learning performance marketing alongside enhancing my career in Social Media Marketing”.

32. What type of work environment do you prefer?

Understanding the work environment candidate is comfortable working in will help an interviewer understand if s/he is the right fit. Prefer highlighting that you like to work in an environment where everyone works together, helps each other achieve targets and a place where one can learn and upgrade skills.

33. How do you want to improve yourself in the coming years?

Share how you perceive your future and the things you would like to do to achieve the same. E.g., “In the next five years, I want to pursue a Master's course, three short-term online studies and a routine that will help me balance my professional and personal life. To achieve this, I would like to start small with basic research in terms of Master's courses, observe my daily habits and try to change them little by little”.

34. What do you think of your previous boss?

Answer this question from a perspective of How much you were able to learn. Remember, they don't want to understand your boss as an individual but from your perspective. E.g., “With the help of my boss, I was able to achieve these many tasks. S/He has helped me step out of my comfort zone and acquire new skills. I believe s/he is a helpful and hardworking person”. 

35. What three character traits would your friends use to describe you?

You can start your answer by saying- “My friends have always considered me a person who will stand by them no matter what. If I have to be precise, I would like to deduce it into three words- helpful, supportive, and honest”.

36. What will you miss the most about your last organization?

Your answer can be as simple as missing your teammates who ended up becoming your friends or your boss who has always been supportive.

37. Do you read anything? If yes, what are you reading currently?

If you have mentioned reading as your hobby, this question might come up for sure. Always be honest about this question as you never know if the interviewer is reading the same magazine/book, and the whole interview can turn into a discussion about the same.

38. Who inspires you the most?

Your answer can be as simple as your parents/friends/celebrity. But make sure to justify your answer by mentioning that person's unique traits and how you want to head to the same path.

39. What techniques/tools do you use to keep yourself organized?

They need to understand if a candidate can organize their daily tasks effectively or not. You can mention that you take notes of your daily tasks every morning and start working on them one by one. You can also highlight certain apps that you use to organize your tasks. For, e.g., Trello, Calendly, etc.

40. What is your mission statement?

A personal mission statement will define who you are as a person, the goals in your life, and how you would like to pursue them. Most importantly, it answers why you consider those goals a priority.

How Do I Prepare Myself for a Target Interview? 

Target interview questions can be a little tricky. Hence, it's important to stay prepared beforehand and never lose hope. Keep the following things in mind when preparing for a Target Interview.

1. Get to know the company in the best way possible. Read articles and case studies related to Target. An interviewer should feel confident and convinced while asking questions related to the brand. It will help them understand how eager a candidate is to work for this brand.

2. Keep Your Professional Goals Clear: Target always prefers to hire those candidates who have clear set goals for their future. Hence, keep your current plans aligned.

3. Be Confident: We all get nervous during an interview. But it's important to share answers with confidence and avoid fumbling. If preferred, you can also take a pause, frame your answer and share it.

4. Formal Attire: Your attire plays a significant role in how you present yourself. The way you dress for an interview gives potential employers their first impression of how you present yourself professionally. If you don't dress appropriately for an interview, you give the impression that you lack respect for yourself and those you are meeting with. So, don’t forget to put on a formal dress for your Target interview.

5. Documents: Before heading for the interview, keep your documents ready. Carry your resume, educational certificates, previous company experience certificates, and other necessary documents. It is also essential that you carry photocopies of everything.

What Questions to Ask at the End of the Interview?

At the end of the interview, they might ask you if you have any questions in mind. Rather than staying silent, always ask 2-3 questions that convince them that you're interested in knowing more about the job role. Here are a few questions that you can ask-

1. What will my day look like at Target?
2. What are the working days and hours?
3. What will be included in my roles and responsibilities?
4. I am at that stage where I want to learn new skills and take up new challenges. Will there be anyone superior to me who will be helping me achieve the same?
5. Will I get any specific training before I start with major roles and responsibilities?

Conclusion

In conclusion, interviewing at Target might feel like a difficult challenge. But remember, no task is impossible. At Target, all they are looking for is confident people who have clear goals and contribute efficiently to help grow this brand. Hence, make sure your checklist includes all these points. Always carry a resume which looks interactive and engaging. Include your qualifications and the courses that you have taken.

You must also mention the online certification programs and training you may have completed via online modes and platforms. For example, if you have completed a PMP® Certification Training, put it in your resume. The more skillset you have, the more opportunities you get. This in-depth cloud computing certification course lets you master key architectural principles and develop the skills needed to become a cloud expert. With the right qualification and the necessary skill set, you can easily crack any interview!