Group 'interview' (at a small, regional town store) with only 3 other candidates. This was a TWO HOUR 'interview' (!) for a temporary contract for 8 or 12 hours... yet, the recruiter couldn't give any specific details at the interview like contract length or pay rate. Nor could the store manager, who was also in the interview and looked uninterested throughout the session. Most of the time was spent working through a printed presentation pack with questions and information - where all four of us spoke up and gave answers. It didn't feel that personable as clearly we were all qualified to do the job - we'd all mentioned that we had worked in retail - but we didn't really want to say too much so to make it harder for others to make some points to questions or make the session run longer than it already had been scheduled for ... did I say TWO HOURS (oh my...) There was a shop floor exercise where we worked in pairs to pick out an outfit for a specified scenario. When presenting it, we were pushed on the questions you would ask the customer... apart from price, colour, style questions... what else can you say. Ironically, i've never ever been approached or been helped by a Sales Advisor at my H&M. So, it was one week from application to interview (with 48 hours notice), and it took one week for the standad rejection to come through, saying "We have enjoyed getting to know you...", which is rather odd wording when they never did a 1-1 or allow us to talk about what we could contribute to the store. So, many red flags and a complete waste of time. Other candidates shared similar views about how strange and long the process was... not even John Lewis or Marks and Spencer do 2 hour assessments for temp jobs! Chichester.

I applied for the H&M Eastland branch and got a short phone call a monthish later asking if I was still interested in the job and whether we could arrange a video meeting which was arranged a week later. The interviewers were very nice, kept emphasising it was a casual talk and were easy to talk to. Got called back on the same day to offer the job to me which I accepted.