1st stage - telephone interview 2nd stage - face to face interview 3rd stage - branch visit (3 hours) 4th stage - assessment day (7 hours) Telephone interview and face to face interview asked the same kind of questions. The face to face interview went very well the interviewer told me there and then I would be going through to the next stage and that he really liked me. The branch visit also went really well, was told how much they’d like me on the team and how suitable I was for the job role. The assessment day started at 9:30, when I arrived some of the other candidates were chatting to the interviewers and it became clear that they’d met before, I then found out that the interviewers had gone through the other stages with the other candidates, so they’d met them in their face to face interview and then branch visit. Therefore I straight away felt like I was at a disadvantage, as the day went on we had a few tasks to complete such as 2 roles plays, which I did very well in, in the first one I was one of only a few who managed to get the sale and then I was told I handled the customer complaint role play very well. Then we had a logistics exercise which was a day in the life of an assistant manager, this was organising your day, dealing with colleagues calling in sick and making a plan for the drivers, I was told I also did this very well. The third task was a group discussion, we were all individually given a charity which we then had to give a little talk about and try to convince the group to donate to our charity, this was where I felt I was set up to fail. I was given a wildlife charity that needed a £2000 investment to fix an inaccessible path, only after listening to the others talking I realised that there was no chance I could argue for a donation against the other charities, the other charities were things such as donating money for disabled children to get a hoist for a swimming pool to allow them to have swimming lessons, donating money to asylum seekers to further their education, putting computers in to churches to try and keep children off the street and so on. My charity didn’t stand a chance against all these other charities, I mentioned to the woman who headed the interview at the end that I felt like I was set up to fail and how I thought it was a bit hard to put a good argument forward for that particular charity and she just responded ‘I know’. All in all I felt it was quite an unfair process, the interviewers in the 2nd and 3rd process really liked me and thought I’d be a great addition to the team, but I was told ‘I met all the requirements but didn’t wow’ at the final stage.