I applied online and firstly sat the online application and then personality questionnaire, immediately after this I was told I had been successful and was now needed to select a desired interview date and time. After getting to the store I was told to wait in the employees lounge area. I was then called into the interview room where two management staff greeted me and explained the first task; this was a logical thinking exercise aimed at assessing how I would approach preparing 3 items in the cafe using cards to detail each step. After completing it I then had to go through the process and explain my thinking to the assessors. After a break in the lounge area I was called back in and there was a questionnaire which I had to fill out detailing what previous experience I have had. Then there was the interview, where one assessor asked the questions and the other wrote down my answers. No difficult questions, the usual questions and mostly ones where you had to recall a previous experience bases of their questions (I think they were along the lines of the four M&S principles). This lasted for about 20-30 minutes and after which I was told to wait in the lounge area again whilst they made their decision. I was called back in and told I'd been successful and then there was all the paperwork to go through, availability, right to work in the UK proof etc. I was then free to leave, the whole thing lasted about 2 hours.

I was told the first part would be a selling exercise where you were given one sheet detailing the food product you were trying to sell to the 'customer' (interviewee) and another sheet with additional information and then there would be a series of interview questions to follow. However, I was supposed to be effectively presenting to a group of other interviewees while being assessed but I was the only one at the interview slot so I just presented to one of the M&S workers while the manager assessed. The item I was given was the wood fired margarita pizza and the first sheet of paper gave a small description of it and other info such as its salt/carb content (which I thought wasn't relevant to upselling the product). The other sheet detailed sparks offers, info such as buy a side salad for an extra £1 or add extra mozzerella and I mentioned everything relevant to the product - there was some useless info - they were clearly trying to see what you would pick out as relevant to selling the food product to the customer. I was given just under 10 mins to read through the info and take notes (do take notes because they take this sheet with them when marking). To me it was less of a role play exercise and more like a small presentation (I spent about 1-2 mins presenting) because the person playing the customer basically didn't talk back or ask any questions. They were very friendly and the manager assessing wasn't staring at me while I was presenting which took the pressure off a bit but remember to keep smiling anyway. Once they came back in the room they asked me how I thought that went and what could have gone better and were very understanding that this wasn't a very natural thing to do (speaking to customers in real life is a lot easier). The manager asked me a few standard interview questions for a retail job such as "why M&S", "what do you expect from M&S customer service", "name a time you worked well as a team", also one which stumped me a bit - "what could be better about M&S customer service" so you were to basically criticise them but they said this was kind of a trick question - I answered that it was good from my experience so don't have any criticisms. They then asked the standard availability questions etc (irrelevant to passing the interview) and then left the room to assess both aspects of the assessment. Once she came back in, she told me I had passed both part of the assessment (role play and interview) and offered me the job on the spot.