Recruiting on Campus: Groupon

Groupon will be at the February 13 Business Career Fair and is looking for May graduates to fill open sales roles in Merchant Development and Business Development.  UIC Business caught up with Lauren Mullins, senior sales campus recruiter at Groupon, during a branding day organized by the Business Career Center.

UIC Business: What kind of candidate is Groupon looking for?
LM: People who do well here have an entrepreneurial spirit, are self-motivated, super coachable, resilient, and organized. I’d say those are the biggest things we look for in terms of transferable skills. We’ve identified that those are the skills that our most successful sales reps bring to the table. We can teach anyone how to sell as long as they’ve got those core skills.

UIC Business: What’s the first thing that you look for when you look at a resume?
LM: Me personally, I’m a stickler for how a resume is organized and formatted. Is the formatting consistent? Are there formatting errors? If someone isn’t able to pay attention to those details and have their resume be organized when it really matters, when they’re trying to find a job, I really question whether or not they would be organized in their day-to-day job when their guard is down. Every recruiter looks at something different. For me, I’m super detail-oriented, so that’s something that will be a red flag. Outside of that, I look for applicable experience to the role I’m recruiting for.

UIC Business: What is a question that all candidates should be prepared to answer and have a response ready to go?
LM: There are probably three really big ones: Why are you interested in this company? Why are you interested in this role? And what are your career goals? Those are “gimme” questions that any recruiter from any company is going to initially ask. And the answers have to be something with substance. It’s got to be more than “oh, Groupon’s a really cool company, I hear you don’t have a dress code and it’s a startup culture,” or “I don’t know, I thought sales would be cool because I can talk to people.” We like to hear some deeper insights, a little more than surface level.

UIC Business: If you had the day off on this snowy Tuesday, what Chicago adventure would you go on?
LM: I would probably go to a cat cafe, I hear there’s one open on Belmont in Lakeview, and sip on some tea, hang out with kittens and plan my trip to Italy this summer.

UIC Business: What’s your favorite discovery that you’ve made through Groupon?
LM: My husband and I always go down to St. Petersburg, FL. His family has a condo on the beach there so we usually use that as our winter vacation to escape from the cold. So typically we go to the beach, go to some restaurants and that’s about it. But this past year we went paddle boarding and also rented kayaks and explored some of the waterways in St.Pete. It was something we had never done before, and it was a way to see the area from a different perspective. We used Groupons for both, so we supported Groupon and local businesses at the same time.

Have questions about the Career Fair or need interview preparation resources? Contact the UIC Business Career Center.