I found the advert for the job online (Indeed.co.uk).
When applying to this job, I had to complete an assessment to show how I would act in certain hypothetical in-store situations, and another personality assessment.
11 days later, I received an email which asked me to select a date I was available for an interview. The website also told me to select a product which Boots sell, in order to 'sell' it to my interviewer.
The interview was much less formal than I expected, and the interviewer was so nice and chatty which really helped me to feel at ease. First of all, I was taken to a staff room so that she could ask me some interview questions. There was the obvious 'Why do you want to work for Boots?' question, and then she asked me something along the lines of 'when was a time that you were in a difficult situation but had to adapt to it?'. After about 5-10 minutes in the staff room, the interviewer then explained to me that I would be taken on to the shop floor and that I'd be talking to customers and showing her my preferred product. We started off with my product, which was Simple Facial Toner. I told her all the benefits of this particular product, and then related it to my own experiences with the product and brand. She seemed pretty impressed that I had gone into so much detail, so that part was over in about 2 minutes.
Afterwards, she told me that she would observe while I talked to customers, and if there was anything I didn't know, she would be nearby to help. I only had to ask 2 customers if they were ok and if I could help them with anything.
Since the interview had progressed fairly quickly, she also took me to an aisle and asked me what could be done to tidy it up. Then, I was asked to focus on two small parts of the aisle and was given instructions to do what I could to tidy it up in 5 minutes or so while my interviewer went elsewhere to give me space to do it. This was the last task I had to complete, and the interview lasted for about 20 minutes overall.
Around a week later, I received a phone call and was asked to come into one of their stores which had a couple of openings to 'chat' to them. They said that they would have to talk with me a bit before they could offer me the job, but I'm unsure what they will ask me or whether I will get the job, as I've still to meet with them.