I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Primark in Apr 2025
Interview
The application process starts in a pointlessly strenuous way for what is a basic near-minimum wage retail job. CV? Fine, of course. But then they make you do some cheesy personality/'social kills' type assessment which is basically just designed to discriminate against neurodivergent people when you look at studies on outcomes.
Anyway, I was invited to an interview and I was given a grand total of about 18 hours notice for it. The interview was on Thursday morning and I was told about it Wednesday early afternoon. It was a no-reply email so you couldn't confirm or re-arrange. I had a healthcare appointment so I tried ringing them to re-arrange and nobody picked up the phone!
I had to cancel my long-awaited healthcare appointment. When I showed up 5 minutes early (they requested no more than 5 mins early in the email) they left me waiting for about 15 minutes while the interviewing manager did other stuff-a sign of an understaffed store, as is common in retail these days.
Then they took me up to the interview room and left me for another 10 minutes. The interview wasn't too long and was basic. They ask questions, you answer-no room for a dialogue or conversation as they're just asking the questions off a sheet. "Tell me about a time when you... ; tell me a time when you demonstrated..." I don't remember the exact ones to be honest.
After the interview they thanked me and that was all good. They were polite and nice enough though I wouldn't say friendly.
Also, you needed to bring in NI and proof of identity (e.g., passport) within 48 hours of the interview. Given that this was arranged at short notice it was extremely hard to get the NI letter in time (photo was not accepted) and I had to ask a parent to post it 1st class.
Anyhow, I was rejected a couple of days later with no feedback and just an automated message. Once again this was a no-reply email so I couldn't ask for feedback that way. When I tried ringing them to ask for feedback nobody picked up yet again.
What a joke of a process. So disrespectful to the candidate.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about a time when you overcame a difficult situation (or something like that).
The interview was straightforward, with a few basic questions about holiday availability, teamwork, previous experience, and examples of when I demonstrated key skills and qualities such as communication, reliability, and customer service.
simple, asked questions about day to day scenarios that could occur at the shop and what you would do in those situations then asked about availability, said they are always happy to give people their first job
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
what you'd say to someone who wanted to try something on but fitting room line was long
good experience, asked standard questions such as in STAR format eg teamwork, resilience, etc and was fairly short, around 25 minutes, did not get the offer unfortunately but may be due to my availability
Retail Assistant applicants have rated the interview process at Primark with 2.2 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 71% positive. To compare, the company-average is 73.5% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Retail Assistant roles take an average of 18 days to get hired, when considering 34 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Primark overall takes an average of 16 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Primark as a Retail Assistant according to 34 Glassdoor interviews include:
One on one interview: 31%
Phone interview: 14%
Skills test: 13%
Background check: 11%
Personality test: 9%
Presentation: 7%
Group panel interview: 6%
Drug test: 4%
IQ intelligence test: 3%
Other: 1%
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