MockQuestions

Wayfair Mock Interview

To help you prepare for a Wayfair job interview, here are 40 interview questions and answer examples.

Wayfair was updated by on June 23rd, 2023. Learn more here.

Question 1 of 40

Tell me about one of your recent accomplishments and how the rest of the team fits into it.

Wayfair emphasizes how their people are team-oriented; the accomplishments of the team supersede the recognition of the ambitions of any one person. "We presume good intent while prioritizing impact. We balance confidence and candor with humility and kindness. We are a team of open-minded individuals that are driven by data rather than egos, who support each other through both success and failures. Here, you will not only join our established culture, but actively share and contribute to it."

Your interviewer is trying to assess your approach to furthering your career goals. They want to determine whether you have a large ego and claim credit for the accomplishments of your teams or if you are more team-oriented and give credit where credit is due when others have participated in your accomplishments to further the goals of your teams.

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40 Wayfair Interview Questions & Answers

Table of Contents

Wayfair started their company in 2002, and last year celebrated “twenty years of home.” They are considered one of the leading furniture and home goods e-commerce companies. Wayfair prides itself on data-driven product design, its modern end-to-end tech stack, and building “world-class experiences and relationships for our customers, partners, and employees.” Wayfair advertises that its mission is changing the future of the home by transforming the way people shop for homes. They look at their "data-driven product design" as an investment, which helps them better understand their customers.

They consider their people integral to delivering the success of their company vision. So, they’ve taken a similar, data-driven approach to recruiting their talent as well. They’ve developed a “certified interview program” to identify the strongest candidates and mitigate bias to ensure a fairer and more equitable interview experience while identifying the best talent.

One of the ways Wayfair stands apart from its competitors, such as Amazon, Walmart, and Lowes, is that they maintain a drop-ship business model, where they maintain lower inventory levels, use their asset-based warehouses and logistics, and ship directly from their supplier partners when they can, which they enable by their acute focus on communication, data, and analysis. They also use innovative systems to communicate with and track the inventory of their suppliers.

Wayfair has partnered with over seven-thousand suppliers under six branded retail websites. These include Wayfair’s main site, Joss and Main, AllModern, Birch Lane, Perigold, and Wayfair Professional. Their locations span the globe, with their two main headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts, and Berlin, Germany. They offer onsite and remote positions with global career advancement opportunities.

  • Accomplishment

    1. Tell me about one of your recent accomplishments and how the rest of the team fits into it.

  • Accomplishment

    2. Tell me about yourself.

  • Adaptability

    3. At Wayfair, we work openly and cross-functionally. Tell me about a time teams collaborated, changing the course of your day.

  • Adaptability

    4. This position may require you to attend trade shows. Are you restricted from traveling in any way?

  • Behavioral

    5. How important to you is it to build relationships with those you work with?

  • Career Goals

    6. How does a job at Wayfair fit into your career plans?

  • Career Goals

    7. Wayfair offers rapid growth and professional development. Which long-term path would you take with us if you could choose?

  • Compatibility

    8. How passionate are you about charity and giving back?

  • Compatibility

    9. Have you ever purchased from Wayfair? If so, walk me through your experience. If not, how could we gain you as a customer?

  • Compatibility

    10. Wayfair is one of the world's largest online destinations for the home. Why are you the best candidate for us?

  • Competency

    11. Name for me three of Wayfair's retail brands.

  • Creative Thinking

    12. In the last year, what ideas of yours benefited your current or former employer?

  • Critical Thinking

    13. Give me an example of a time you approached something from outside of the box.

  • Customer Service

    14. At Wayfair, we always think of the customer first. What are the top 3 ways that we can ensure consumer satisfaction?

  • Customer Service

    15. Have you ever broken company rules to make a customer happy?

  • Customer Service

    16. We seek to hire those with strong customer instincts. How do you 'think like a customer'?

  • Diligence

    17. Wayfair is an enterprise obsessed with data. How do you use data to make smart decisions in your current role?

  • Discovery

    18. Do you have a passion for the home-space or e-commerce?

  • Discovery

    19. What is one must-have item for your home that you haven't found or been able to justify or afford?

  • Discovery

    20. Outside of work, what type of creative activities do you pursue?

  • Diversity

    21. What are your views on the importance of fostering a diverse, equitable, and inclusive work environment?

  • EQ

    22. What is your first response to when you do something wrong at work?

  • EQ

    23. How do you react when you are dissatisfied with the quality of or the outcome of your work?

  • EQ

    24. Tell me about the last time you took ownership of something at work.

  • Experience

    25. Have you ever negotiated favorable terms with suppliers or vendors?

  • Job Satisfaction

    26. Which of the Wayfair's employee perks interest you most?

  • Performance Based

    27. What does hard work mean to you?

  • Performance Based

    28. How did you prepare for this interview?

  • Performance Based

    29. At Wayfair, we encourage you to help us set new standards. What would you change about our company right now if you could?

  • Problem Solving

    30. Tell me about the most challenging aspect of your previous job. How did you overcome it?

  • Problem Solving

    31. What steps do you take to solve a problem?

  • Problem Solving

    32. Wayfair empowers employees to take smart risks. Tell me about a time you took a calculated risk at work.

  • Scenario Based

    33. Tell me about the last time you worked through a restructure or similar company changes.

  • Situational

    34. If you did not understand a process, what would you do?

  • Stress

    35. Due to the Wayfair customer promise, we face aggressive deadlines daily. How well do you cope under pressure?

  • Technical

    36. Have you ever worked with a CRM or client management software?

  • Technical

    37. Wayfair commits to providing industry-leading technology. Do you consider yourself tech-savvy? Why or why not?

  • Tough

    38. Do you have anything else to share that we didn't cover in this interview?

  • Tough

    39. What do you know about the executive team at Wayfair?

  • Tough

    40. What is the Wayfair company tagline?

    • Questions to ask in your Wayfair Interview

    Everyone has heard the expression, 'You are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you.' You’ll have plenty of opportunities to ask questions as they arise throughout the interview process. And you should. But you need a few questions in reserve to save for the end when your interviewer asks you if you have any other questions for them.

    This is not the time to ask questions about salary or benefits. Doing so will only suggest your motivation for pursuing a position with them is centered solely on the money. Instead, take advantage of this prime opportunity to present a unique or memorable question that sets you apart from the other candidates. The more big-picture questions you ask, the more of a unique candidate you’ll seem.

    Start by writing as many questions as you can while you perform your research on the company and on the job. Anytime you learn something new that leads to another question, write that question down. Then try to answer that question for yourself. Constantly question any aspect of the information you learn along the way. If the job listing uses an industry term you’ve not heard before, look it up. If it mentions a software they use that you are unfamiliar with, research that as well, and seek answers until you’ve cast light on everything. Save anything that remains unanswered for your interviewer. The more relevant the question is to their systems, culture, vision, and expectations, the better.

    Here are five sample questions you might ask at the end of your Wayfair interview. However, be sure to use these questions as a guide for the questions you could ask, and try to come up with as many as you can on your own.

    1. I am curious to learn more about the extent to which Wayfair operates cross-functionally. Is it just between teams, between each of Wayfair’s career spaces, or even between all of Wayfair’s companies?

    2. What does the typical onboarding process look like? How much time would it take for a top performer to get up to speed?

    3. I read that Wayfair’s company founders work side by side with their workforce. Niraj Shah once said, “You have to celebrate wins and let everyone who worked hard on something to know that they were successful and that you’re proud of the team.” And Steve Conine said, “You spend more time with the people you work with than you do your spouse. You need to be sure that you believe in and trust those people.” Even though Wayfair describes itself as a team of open-minded individuals driven by data rather than egos, building relationships with your higher-ups sometimes comes down to adapting to their personalities and views. So, my question is, have you met them, and do you find working with your executive officers empowering or intimidating?

    4. What is your favorite thing about working for Wayfair?

    5. How did this position come to be available? Is it a newly created position or one that was recently vacated? On what terms did that person leave, and how has that impacted the team? How big are the shoes I’ll be filling, and how will that influence my ability to build relationships with the rest of the team?

    Wayfair's Company Culture

    At Wayfair, they celebrate being an open and transparent work culture. So much so that their founders and executives work side by side in the same open space with the rest of their staff. There are no walls or cubicles dividing one desk from another. Also, they’ve won a wide variety of awards for celebrating diversity, equality, and inclusion, championing an environment where everyone has a voice. As they advertise on their site, “We’re here to help everyone, anywhere, create their feeling of home.”

    As they detail on their website, their people-principles define how they operate as individuals, as teams, and as a company. They call this “the North Star that we anchor on, the true distillation of who we are.” Also, they attribute their success to three key elements: Great People who generate Great Ideas through Great Ambition.

    “Great people have diverse perspectives but share a commitment to respect, a love of solving hard problems, and a spirit of having fun through the hustle. Great ideas come from anywhere within our walls and are grounded in both data and instinct, inspired by what we see in the world, and often fully bespoke and homegrown. Great ambition is what drives us. We’re in constant pursuit of doing better, by our customers, by our people, and by our community.”

    So before your interview, don’t limit your research to learning everything you can about Wayfair. Spend adequate time examining your career and work experiences as well. This will help you determine how you fit their mold. Determine how aligned their work environment is with the work conditions you'd require to reach your peak performance levels.

    About the Author

    Kevin Downey

    Interviewing and hiring someone is a huge responsibility. You not only need to find someone with the right skills and qualifications but someone who will get along with everyone else on the team and will be able to represent the company and its core values. That hire needs to be diligent and trustworthy while following the standards and processes everyone else adheres to. They need to perform with consistency, be emotionally intelligent, and be respectful of the needs and concerns of the others on the team. They need to seek out proactively a deeper understanding of the nature of the company and their teammates. That’s a tall order to determine when interviewing anyone. But it’s all part of the recruiter’s job.

    If the team doesn’t get along with that hire, or that hire introduces an unwelcome attitude to the workplace. One person’s consistent attendance issues can impact the job satisfaction of everyone else on the team, lower productivity, and negatively impact the performance of the company as a whole on either a micro or macro scale. So when an interviewer decides to hire any person, they are putting their reputation on the line.

    Looking for the perfect hire requires strong attention to detail. So there were a variety of things I would look for. I’d examine their cover letter, resume, or application for inconsistencies, from formatting to punctuation. I would scrutinize the consistency of their answers from one question to the next. But, I would first and foremost evaluate why they wanted to work for us. If they were playing the numbers game trying to find a job anywhere, it was pretty evident.

    But, it was those applicants who seemed to have an inside view, or inherent understanding, of the real qualifications of the job that I’d put at the top of the pile. They understood the job expectations and the culture and already seemed like they were one of the team. So much of this comes through in one simple thing: their enthusiasm. They had an energy that fit right in. This is something that can rarely be faked.

    If you invest the time to gain a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what life is like working somewhere, and when the more you learn, the more you get emotionally invested in that opportunity, the better your chances will be for winning that job. For the interviewer, when it comes to identifying how consistent a candidate’s work performance would be, the truest test is determining how well they understand the job and how enthusiastic they are to work there, even after everything they learned. That alone suggests they’ll consistently do whatever it takes to win the job and, once hired, go the extra mile for the team.

    Learn more about Kevin Downey