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Well that’s an interesting one… there are bound to be courses available in accounts management and dealing with customer service etc, but I am of the opinion that experience is 10 times more valuable than a certificate.
I would suggest that you get involved in something outside of work to gain the extra experience. Perhaps you can get in touch with your local estate agent or volunteer your services to a letting company and gain some experience (and contacts that way).
Have you actually tried applying for jobs in the field that you are interested in? As it may be companies will recognise your skills and potential and be prepared to train you in the skills which need developing.
Good luck.
It’s always good to be prepared for following questions in any job interview:
- Tell me about yourself.
- What are your strengths?
- What are your weaknesses?
- Why do you want this job?
- Where would you like to be in your career five years from now?
- What’s your ideal company?
- What attracted you to this company?
- Why should we hire you?
- What did you like least about your last job?
- When were you most satisfied in your job?
- What can you do for us that other candidates can’t?
- What were the responsibilities of your last position?
- Why are you leaving your present job?
- What do you know about this industry?
- What do you know about our company?
- Are you willing to relocate?
- Do you have any questions for me?
Good luck.
The answer to whether or not to take the job is a personal one. If you really won’t get on with the hours then you should consider not taking the vacancy if it is offered to you, however are these really unsociable hours?? They offer a lie-in in the morning or head to the shops while the town is quiet and finishing times are not too late in the evening for you to go out or get jobs done.
Personally if you’re keen on the job I think you should take it. There may be an opportunity in the future to apply for alternative hours that suit you better.No, the job centre wouldn’t give out your personal information without your permission. However new employer is entitled to ask for references and this almost always includes your current or most recent employer. Just make sure you are confident about the gap.
Good luck.
i suggest you to still turn up for your interview tomorrow adn explain the situation with the registration process if they have asked you to do that before your interview.
Good luck.
I have just found which i thought can be helpful for you:
It was a group interview with 4 stages. I think most of the time they were also watching you to see how you got along with the people surrounding you so if you were quiet that might work against you. So basically we’re sat in 2 rows of about 20-25 people. There’s a panel of 4 John Lewis managers in front and everyone is sitting.
Stage 1: Describe yourself and why you want to work there. You just talk a bit about yourself and make sure you talk about the John Lewis Partnership.
Stage 2: Sell a John Lewis item. They present to you a basket of objects, you get 5 minutes to think of things to say about it to sell to a customer (the panel). If you laugh a bit it’s okay, just talk about textures, situations you could use this item etc.
Stage 3: You’re put in groups. You each get a white board. There’s a sheet of paper with a list of tasks i.e. Answer phone, clean shelves, mop up liquid on floor… And the scenario is that you have a big line of customers, there is a customer complaining etc… and you have to put them in order of priority. You have to make sure you know that you can use all members of your team simultaneously to complete the tasks.
Stage 4: People on a desert island, half of them can be saved, the other half will perish. Choose who gets to be saved. Advice: don’t assume that anyone who is a doctor is good, you can’t judge people on their backgrounds if you don’t know them.
Don’t forget to come back here and let us know about your interview!
Good luck.
Hi Jenny,
Your cover letter is very positive and is an excellent start. I would suggest that you make the following changes:
replace ‘…duties of which…’ with ‘…where duties have included…’
replace ‘I am highly organised as during my employment at ___…’ with ‘I have demonstrated my excellent organisation skills during my employment at___ where…’
Include a second paragraph which details why you want to work for that company, ideally including some company specific information. For example read through their company website or do some research and find out about recent projects or their ethos which particularly interests you to that company.
It wouldn’t hurt to add a ‘Thank you for taking the time to read my enclosed CV. I would be pleased to attend…’
I would also suggest that all of your contact details are included on the cover letter too. It’s not difficult to stick your name, address, telephone and email on the top right hand side of a letter head, and having dealt with many job applications over the years, experience tells me the less work a recruiter has to do, the more likely they are to be keen on your application… and it’s not impossible to imagine your CV getting lost, but if they have your contact details they can always ask for another copy!
Best of luck!
If your are applying for Deli Customer Assistant Role then carry on reading this.
1- You will take a test online which will be about your personality, food Knowledge
2- On the Assestment day:
Same test of food knowledge and:
- Role play: help a costumer with a party (or something similiar)
- Typical interview questions.
It’s completly up to applicants to answer those questions during the application process however focus on being helpful to the customer and put them first. You should find the answers yourself! don’t forget they may ask the same questions during the interview.
Wetherspoon is a pub which serves food. They are known for being cheap and family friendly. You would mainly be working in the kitchens or doing bar work.
It is important to make sure that just because the pub is cheap, it does not mean that it does not want to give good customer service. You will need to show at interview that you will be welcoming and friendly to the customers. You will probably be asked for examples of when you were in certain situations and what you did in them. You may need to think of ways that you have helped people. They may ask you how to deal with complaints as well, such as a customer complains about the food but has already eaten most of it. You may also be asked to think about how you would sell a customer a dessert. Consider different scenarios and questions that you might get so that you are prepared for answering them. You may also have to explain how you will cope with the job if you do not have relevant experience, so would need to explain that you are a quick learner and enthusiastic and perhaps show how your past experience might help you.
They may want some bar experience, but they do take on people who have had none and will train you up, by allowing you to work alongside someone else. This means that it is important to demonstrate that you are a good learner and willing to take instruction. They sometimes prefer inexperienced people so that they can train them in their ways and so you could use that as a selling point. If you are working in the kitchens they may prefer more experience though and so be prepared for that.
They may ask you how many hours you want and what days you want to work. Be honest because if you are not, then you could get stuck with hours that do not really suit you. You want to make sure that you are happy. Pub hours can be from breakfast time until the early hours of the morning, depending on the branch and so you need to consider what you can do, especially if you are fitting it around another job, a course or a family.
H. Samuel is a high street jewellery chain. They sell jewellery for men and women, some ornaments and gifts as well as doing valuations and buying gold. They usually take on sales assistants and store managers.
To get a job with H Samuel, you will need to have good customer service skills but also show an interest in jewellery. It is therefore wise to make sure that you know plenty about it. Take a look at their website and learn about the types of jewellery that they sell so that you have some knowledge of that it is also worth noting particularly interesting ranges.
You will need to show that you have good customer service skills and so highlight any relevant experience that you have of this, where you can. You may be asked how you would cope with difficult customers and so consider what you might do. Refer to cases where you have been in the situation before and what you did, if you can. Consider what you feel makes a good customer service assistant and explain that is what you would like to be like.
You are likely to be asked why you want to work for them and so consider this beforehand. It is always good to say something like you have always liked the company, shop there regularly or heard good things about them.
It is good to do some research about the company, find out about their history so that you can answer questions about it, should they be asked.
If you are going for a management role, then you will still need to show you have good customer service skills as well as an interest in the company. However, you will also need to show that you have experience of managing people. If you have not worked as a manager before then highlight any qualifications that you have or any qualities that you think you have that would enable you to perform well in the role.
As you will be dealing with valuable items, then you may need to prove that you are trustworthy as well. Consider when you have been in a position where you have had to handle valuable things in the past that you can use to demonstrate this.
Jobs at Ryanair vary a lot. You may think that it all about cabin crew, but actually there are also sales managers and an administration team that work behind the scenes. Therefore you will need to demonstrate different skills, depending on which role you want to take up.
It is always wise to find out things about the company before you go for an interview. You need to consider who they are and what they do as well as recent news. The head of Ryanair is always in the news with regards to airport tax and things like that and so it is a good idea to be aware of that, just in case you get asked.
It is wise to also know what the job requires. This is because you will be expected to demonstrate that you are able to succeed in the role and therefore need to know what is expected of you. It is very important to think of each of the requirements and see whether you can think of something that you have done which will demonstrate your ability to do that. It may be that you have done a similar job before. If you have not, you may still have something which has skills that you can apply.
Some of the jobs at Ryanair require language skills and so this may be something that you need to demonstrate. If you have not spoken a foreign language for a while then make sure that you practice and also think about the kinds of things you may be asked to say in different languages. Foreign language roles tend to be sales roles and so you will need to consider what will be relevant there.Having an interest in travel, flying or airplanes can be really useful as well, so consider how you might answer questions that are about this. Depending on what your role is you may have to show an interest in mechanics and airplane engines, flying and what happens during a flight or travel and the joys of flying. It could be useful to know about any recent and relevant travel news as well.
World Duty Free is a company that sells items in airports. They sell mainly alcohol, cosmetics, perfume, souvenirs, fashion accessories, foods and tobacco products. It is wise to know a bit more about the range of items that they sell, although there are 17,000 of them, so you will not be expected to know all of them.
As the stores are located in airports, it is unlikely that you will get the opportunity to look around one before your interview. Therefore it is wise to have a good look at their website and find out more about them that way. The website has details about the specific products that they sell and so you will be able to find out more that way.
It is very likely that you will be asked why you want to work for the company. Having an answer to this question can be difficult. You may have good reason to want to work for them, perhaps always wanting to do so or enjoying the retail travel experience. However, if you have not always had an ambition to work for them, then you need to come up with something. Perhaps you have heard good things about the company that you can report back or it is just the type of environment that you really like working in.
It is likely that you will be serving international customers and so you will need to show in your interview that this is something that you are capable of. You may have a basic understanding of more than one language which could be worth a mention. If you are well travelled or used to dealing with people from different countries, then this could also help you.
Obviously retail experience will be important as well, so make sure that you can show that you have plenty of this or at least are used to working with other people. You need to show that you have good customer relations skills. If you are applying for a particular department, such as beauty, then it is good to mention experience that you have of working in that area in the past.
I think you will be referred back to the Job Centre and be expected to sign on and continue to search for jobs. You will now have the benefit of all that knowledge and experience from the programme (?!), and employers get some costs paid if they employ you from the work programme so in theory you stand a better chance of getting a job.
I would like to say that I was signing on at the Job Centre for a period and although I agree it is not always constructive, it did give me an incentive to continue to search through a variety of sources (newspapers, internet, visiting employers) to get back into employment, and made me reassess my criteria. In the end I applied for jobs which were further away than I had initially considered, and got a job which I enjoy.Your cover letter seems adequate to me. There are some gramatical errors which need attention and this should be addressed before you send the letter – Microsoft Word or similar will highlight the errors.
Your letter clearly demonstrates that you are keen to learn and motivated about working in the vacancy. I would certainly include details of your previous experience as although it may not be directly related there are relevant skills – dealing in the medical profession, working with people, time management, paperwork etc. You should be able to review the job description and pick out items which you are already familiar with.
We wish you the best of luck and would like to hear how you get on.
