The whole process took just over a week.I applied online and passed the online assessment which took about half an hour to complete. I was then immediately told I was successful and offered an assessment/interview slot a week later. I was told after the interview that I would find out after 3 days if I'd be offered a position, but they rang and offered me a role the day after... albeit with slightly different hours than the one I'd applied for. Apparently, they had a number of other candidates to interview over the next three days, and the people who get the highest scores in the assessment and interview get offered jobs to fill the vacancies! The assessment/interview took about an hour. Two members of the recruitment team took me into the training room and immediately went into explaining how the role play assessment would work, i.e. the next time they came into the room, one of them would be playing the part of the customer, the other would be the assessor. My role play exercise was about the "customer" in the fictional store having a dinner party for family that evening, in a rush and needing certain ingredients to cook a main course of chicken, parma ham and red peppers. In the accompanying literature and role-play cards, I was aware that parma ham and red peppers were out of stock, and there were other suggested alternatives listed, some of which were deemed to be more/less suitable and more/less expensive. Also included was info about a new range of entertaining ready-prepared starters/mains/desserts etc., which had a promotion "Save £5 if you spend £30", info about the fictional store's ordering service, including "order online before 7pm and get free nominated day delivery. I had 5 mins to assimilate all this info before the "customer" came into the room. My advice would be to try and mention/suggest EVERYTHING which is listed as an alternative or different option... you have to throw yourself into the role-play (put aside any embarrassment) and do lots of attentive nodding, agreeing, smiling - go over the top with trying to satisfy the "customer". You can refer to the role-play cards during the exercise & the staff member playing the "customer" was clearly trying to help in a way, by leading her responses to mine in a positive way and helping me to move onto the next suggestion. After this, they both left the room, leaving me with a form to complete with three sections "what went well, what could have gone better, what would you do differently next time?" - one of them then came to collect this form and left the room again for about 10 mins. It seems clear to me that during this time they were "marking & scoring" my role play and the form I'd completed against their required criteria. One of them came back in along with a manager who I was introduced to. I was then left with the manager who did a brief, standard interview (following her script) lasting about 10 mins e.g. "what is you previous retail/customer experience/why do you want to work for M & S etc...." She then told me immediately that I'd passed the interview and I would hear back soon if I was successful in being fitted into one of their vacancies. The other two then came back n the room, told me I'd also passed the role play assessment, then went on to fill in more forms, this time with all my personal details, bank account number for pay etc and took photocopies I'd brought of my proof of NI number, address and right to work in UK (as explained on interview email). As explained above, they told me I would find out three days later when all the other candidates had been interviewed, but in actual fact I received a phone call the next day offering me a position, which I accepted.