What Happens at a Coles Group Interview

I recently attended a Coles group interview and, curious as to what a group interview entailed, I searched the web for answers. Unfortunately, I didn't find too many reliable sources (nothing but a couple of Yahoo Answers posts), and had to learn first-hand what the interview was all about. I'm going to comment at length about the interview process, and I hope that you find some comfort in reading about the workings of the group interview. Hopefully, this might help to boost your confidence, and might also give you the edge over your fellow interviewees.

When I received an email from Coles telling me that I had been successful in obtaining a group interview, I was thrilled, and duly noted the time of the interview, and that I should bring a copy of my birth certificate, and a copy of some photo identification. With these grasped tightly in my sweaty palms, I headed over to the customer service desk, and was asked to sign against my name. I took my position outside of the store with the other nervous applicants and about 15 minutes later (15 minutes after the supposed interview time) the forty or so of us were escorted to a large room containing five round tables. We lined up and were asked for our name by the store manager, and were told to sit at a particular table. After a brief introduction by the store manager and each of the five managers in attendance, the fun and games really began.

First, we were told to introduce ourselves to the group. We took turns to doing so in an anti-clockwise manner. This took about two minutes. After this we were directed to fill out our application sheets, which contained questions similar in style to the ones I had answered when I had initially applied on the Internet. They asked for your first and last name, the date, the time, the hours that you would like to work, how many hours you would like to work, the departments that you would like to work in (dairy, produce, night-fill, checkout etc) and whether or not you could lift heavy objects. This was filled out quickly and quietly by my fellow applicants, it was obvious that there was still some nervous energy present. I must add, that during this process the store manager was briefing us on each question, so it was probably unwise of me to rush ahead and complete the application because some points were made that caused me to alter my answers. We were alloted a fair amount of time for this, and then we started group activities.

The group activity consisted of a number of events consisted of a rather odd scenario. We had to take the position of a team member within the supermarket, and position ourselves in the middle of this situation:

1. A bottle of oil has been accidentally dropped in front of you, making it dangerous for you to bypass
2. It is time for you to take a 15 minutes break
3. The stock you are looking for has run out
4. A customer has approached you and asked you to assist them to find the batteries
5. You have 3 additional boxes of stock in a different aisle to be packed away
6. A manager is telling a story to your fellow team members that is not work related but humorous
7. You notice a fellow team member putting some stock in his/her pocket
8. A small child is wandering in your aisle, crying and is obviously lost

After considering each of these events, we had to prioritise the points in order of what we would do first to what we would do last individually. We had two minutes to complete this, then after that we had to discuss and attempt to priorities our points as a group for the remaining eight minutes. After we had organised our group preferences, the store manager asked each group what their preferences were. This took another 10 or so minutes. Finally, around 40 minutes after entering the interview room, we were asked if we had any questions and then thanked for coming to the interview. Unfortunately, as we left the interview we were not given any indication of whether we were successful or not. Once again I hope this article helped to ease your nerves and I wish you the best of luck in getting the job.