John Lewis & Partners Retail Assistant interview questions

Swift, professional and welcoming process. All the staff were kind and guided us candidates through the group assessment with clear instructions and tasks. Very well planned considering COVID restricting numbers and space, they made do with the facilities they had and it was a pleasant assessment experience.

I applied online with the regular process. I completed a standard test and personality quiz and told I would hear back from them in due course. My online account showed an anomaly on the application page , where the status of the application was blank. This led me to believe there was a software error, as I had been warned that their new internal system was buggy from my previous employment in the partnership. Fast forward to Yesterday, where I received an email informing me to my confusion that I had been declined on the basis that I hadn't booked an interview slot. I hadn't received any communication about this , I had no emails, phone calls or status changes on my account to inform me that I needed to book an interview slot. I enquired to the support team immediately and asked them what was going on, I had two agents respond. One of the agents replied with the most confusing email I have ever read, with categorically incorrect information. The other agent informed me that the Hiring Manager had "accidentally" selected the wrong option when deciding whether I was a successful candidate to the role, and that I was actually unsuccessful in obtaining an interview. Both of the behaviours presented are completely unprofessional. Had the hiring manager selected the wrong option, It would have been their responsibility to contact me directly to inform me of this issue, which would have been entirely possible as they had chosen not to send me an invitation to an interview as required by their process , regardless of their mistake. The Support agent informed me that the Hiring Manager had apologised for the confusion, but in my view I shouldn't have had to waste the time of two support agents to get this information from them. I would have loved to have written a positive review about the Partnership.