-Online tests, numerical and situational.- simple and easy to do.
-Telephone Interview- lovely lady, very calming and explained everything to a good degree.
-Assessment centre- this is the stage I felt I was let down by the company.
--there is a presentation where they tell you more about the role and the company, this lasts for around 20 minutes, here they ask you questions. (the interviews are sat around the room observing)
--then you go into a room with 3 other applicants who are applying for the same position in the same region as you are, you discuss about the group work and then present it (10 mins preparation, 5 minute presentation)
--lastly, you have an interview where there are two regional managers and yourself.
-If you pass the assessment centre there is a final interview.
I felt I had performed well in the assessment centre, by correctly answering the most questions in the initial presentation. ( I answered 3, a couple of people answered 1, the other 25 people didn't answer any). I even had to explain to the lady presenting that absenteeism was a KPI, and what it involved as she was unaware, I was very unimpressed by this.
The group exercise went well, we work as a team to outline our points and research, where myself and another member jointly took control. Then we divided the presentation up equally and logically inline with the question we had to answer. (during the end of the preparation time on of the members in the group had been talking for 5 minutes, leaving only 2 minutes for myself and another member to outline our research and divide the presentation, so I stated we only have 2 minutes left, we need to move on. In my eyes, this shows good time management skills and organisational skills, but in the feedback they said that I became 'flustered', this simply wasn't the case. During the actual presentation I involved the most numerical facts and figures (which I had found from my research) as well as providing a very good conclusion which they outlined in the feedback.
Moving onto the 2:1 interview. They were very welcoming and easy going. I responded to the questions they asked with examples from my working back ground as well as examples from Lidl. Whilst adding more information at the end of the interview, and asking 4 good questions. They laughed at a couple of the points I made ( in a good way) and the general feeling at the end was I had given a solid interview. The feedback I got was I had given 'logical and responsible answers to all of the questions whilst showing the good attributes you have and the things you have achieved throughout your life'... 'however, the interviewer felt they had to probe you to provide more information in your answers'. At this point alarm bells rang in my head, this just was not true, I discussed this with the lady providing the feedback on the telephone with me and she said ' I will have a look at the notes they took in the interview tomorrow morning and call you to provide further information'. The telephone call was never received, and they did not try to contact me in any other way.
To me this was very frustrating as I had clearly performed well throughout the process, especially in the assessment centre, whether or not it was a mix up with the notes they took, or not, I will never know.
