AIBU to find supermarket job interviews oddly demanding and irrelevant?

It’s fucking nuts. I miss the 90s. I once went for a job as a seasonal elf in a shopping centre. The interview involved me going into a changing room and trying on the costume. It fit!
I had the job.

Just a guess but maybe it was they saw you only wanting to do the job as a stop gap. That does put employers off.

I would genuinely pick a table full of mass murderers.

I was a nurse for 25 years and wanted to work in Sainsburys part time to fund my university degree to become a podiatrist. I knew the whole store layout and the whereabouts of all their stuff and what it all was.
I was rejected out of hand. No explanation. Spoke to me like I was shit. I had all of the skills they needed ?????

😂😂😂

The job has changed hugely in the last 20 years & especially in the last 5. Alot of the 'easy' tasks - filling shelves , ticketing, checkouts , cash office , picking have become so much more streamlined meaning you need much fewer hours (and therefore staff) to complete them.

You don't have as many managers & supervisors. Alot of supermarkets have got rid of the supervisor, team leader, floor manager type roles. Someone on the basic rate pay (just above minimum wage/living wage) could be the 'duty' in charge of the whole shop. Those are the roles a full time member of staff would need to do.

There are still some basic roles with less responsibilities but those will be very part time. Students etc doing a Saturday & an evening or 4 hour shifts etc

It’s how you justify your picks, not who you choose.

Unless you pick a table of mass murderers.

In 1995 I was asked to design a cereal packet as part of a group at an ASDA interview.

I did not get the job as ‘I wasn’t a team player during the exercise’. It was a solo task and not many people said a word while we sat there.

I am very aware of the new modern job interview trick of asking you to compete a piece of work and steal your ideas. Then ghost you.

Can someone answer this question ?
Why do some interviewers ask the question about which celebrities ( living or dead ) who you would invite to dinner

😂😂😂😂😂

My son when he was 16 spent many hours completing a psychometric test and various online forms for a Saturday job at B&Q. The response was negative immediately he'd completed it.

Another son attended for an interview with Waitrose stacking shelves in the evening. He was one of around 8 candidates shown around the store and back office areas. He never heard back from them.

I went for an interview when I was asked who my favourite superhero was and why.

Then you are unsuitable for the job.
I’ve worked as a section manager for several supermarkets and I don’t think many of my ‘professional’ friends would last 5 minutes. It’s not rocket science but it is fast paced, long hours and hard work. Staff need to be physically able, thorough, quick thinking and adaptable.
Staff also need to be thick skinned and confident enough to deal the rude customers who consider staff beneath them.

But you’ve put a threshold of a degree on your recruitment so you’ve filtered out a load of people. Supermarkets don’t do that, nor should they have a requirement for experience as they’re a perfect entry level job - so how do you pick the one candidate from the 1,000+ CVs with absolutely no filtering criteria. I’m not sure there’s really another way.

Same on the questions, if I want to give someone their first chance at a job I don’t want to know about a time they did a managerial role, or about a time they worked on the tills. I want to know they can hold a conversation like a human and build rapport quickly. Those questions do test that.

Even “oh dear, I don’t have many hobbies - I feel really boring now. I do yoga twice a week if that counts, I’m up to date on coronation street and I taxi the kids around almost full time so I suppose they are my hobbies” would be a passing answer in my book.

Just to be a supermarket worker its really not as easy as people think especially now that you're constantly doing the job of 3 people and customers have got more demanding

Exactly this the questions are irrelevant their judging how you handle them

It's awful. As a student, I just filled in a very short form, and got a job, starting pretty much the next day. Yet now, people have to spend literally hours, longer than I spent on applications for proessional jobs and promotions-and then they sometimes don't even have a job available (yes, I have had people I know tell me this has happened, and shown me some of the long quizzes they had to do, and imagine how frustrating this is for people applying for a first job).
And all the bits about "what would you do in X situation"-I know from working in a supermarket, and from friends/family who still do, that you simply get told procedures by managers.

It’s ridiculous isn’t it? Honestly, years ago you could pop into a supermarket or shop, ask for a job application form and possibly be called in for a quick interview. That was it.

These hoops and stages you need just to be a supermarket worker for instance, is totally unnecessary. It also puts people off applying, particularly people who may be anxious or feel nervous.

Sadly these jobs are quite hard to get nowadays, fairly easy about 20 years ago though.

12 years ago I worked at sainsburys and during the group interview (there was 5 of us) someone got up and moved the clock 2 hours forward so they told us to leave early.

We all got the job though, so idk what happened there

Dd1 applied for a supermarket job while looking for a graduate role .
She said that the interview and assessments for the supermarket role were more rigorous than for the graduate role

Omg this made me laugh 😆

I work in one of the smaller convenience stores and our interviews aren't that deep. Theres some online questions when you apply which are really easy, followed by a bog standard interview with the manager (no weird questions, just ordinary ones) Must be a big store thing 🤔

Sounds like a Woolies interview I had 20 odd years ago.

"Imagine you had £20 to spend right now... what would you buy - go!" Then we had to trounce around the shop with a 60 second timer, the manager counting down with a whistle round his neck like. It was like Mark Clattenberg doing a rip off version of supermarket fucking sweep. The current staff laughing, cheering and clapping whilst we ran like dickheads (away from the pick n mix where we were all stood by at the time). Humiliating.

There was about 30 interviewees "taking part". One fella literally went "nope. Not for me, open the door please, bye!"

Whatever I chose, I was deemed to be too crap to work there anyway. Ha!

Has anyone done an interview for the Co-op recently? If so, what was it like? Were there those awful questions or group work things? Asking for a friend.

Failed the initial Waitrose online stage. Still bitter.

I was thinking the same! I did a contract there in the contact centre years ago and these type of interviews were the norm even back then.