Definitely one of the strangest and most frustrating interview experiences I’ve ever had, which is a shame as I had wanted to work at Co-op for some time. The first interview was very much by the book and entails answering leadership and competency questions while discussing past experience - this lasted around an hour and a half but there was very little information about what the role itself would entail or even how the process would continue (no mention of further interviews or when I may hear back). Several weeks went by and after sending e-mails over to the recruitment team asking if they knew when a decision might be made on the role - I finally received a call saying I had been put through to the second interview stage. At this point I was sent a more detailed job spec - although the role title suggested it was for a junior position, dated back to 2016 and bore little similarity to the job details originally posted online. I queried this and had confirmation it was the most up to date version for the role I was applying for. I still went ahead with the second interview regardless - which entailed several repeated questions from the first interview and still not much detail on exactly what I would be doing day-to-day. There were elements of unprofessionalism as one of the interviewees’ phone went off no fewer then four times during the next hour and a half. Despite everything, I believed I had done more than enough to secure the role and was still keen to hear back - and I even submitted an additional task, unprompted, in which to display my knowledge yet further. Several more weeks passed - I think the total time from application to this point was around 2-3 months. I finally got the call a week or so ago stating that the role had been offered to another candidate, which was absolutely fine, but there was no real feedback or reason as to how I came across or why I wasn’t given the job. All in all, the recruitment team seem very professional and try their best to do right by the applicants, but in my experience at least, it seems as though the hiring managers were quite the opposite.