I was approached by an internal recruiter who set up a phone interview for me. I think there may also have been an online test before this as is standard with Co-op Group jobs, but I'm not certain. I was then booked in for an in-person interview. The first warning sign was when they tried to reschedule my interview after I'd already booked time off work for the original interview date, and I'd specifically said I was taking time off for the interview. Fortunately I managed to get them to go ahead with the original interview date so I didn't end up wasting even more time than I was about to.
The interview itself was more of an assessment day that lasted approximately four hours. The first hour and a half was a formal interview that went OK, nothing out of the ordinary, a bit tedious in places, but it is what it is. Then they placed me with a couple of the data science team just to have a personal and relaxed chat about the role and anything else, which was fine.
After this came the disappointing part of the day, the technical assessment. I'd fully prepared myself for this, I had a good idea what to expect based on prior experiences and what I'd read online about this, but my expectations were not to be realised. The assessors set the test up in Excel, but clearly hadn't prepared properly for it and set it up in such a way that most of the assessment was impossible to do, and they clearly acknowledged to me that this was the case after the fact. It's also worth noting that the computer they gave me to do it on was incredibly old and was challenging to work with to say the least. I made sure to say that I am absolutely capable and would like to be given a more reasonable chance to prove myself, they asked some questions about how Excel worked and I gave answers that I knew were more than good enough, so I was under the fair impression that, given their incapability to set up a basic assessment properly, I wouldn't be judged harshly on this.
Then came the feedback, they told me the formal interview was good, but that my 'technical skills weren't at the required standard'. I remonstrated with the recruiter, explained that this was clearly wrong, and demanded to be given an opportunity to ask my interviewers why they felt the need to give false feedback and waste my time, why they would bother having me come there to sit an extremely poor assessment then turn me away on that basis, wasting everyone's time, but they clearly didn't care.
I've had two bad experiences with the Co-op interviews now, I would seriously recommend anyone thinks twice before going there if they have anything better going for them. I was getting frustrated with interviewing for jobs but less than a month later I got a better job offer than the one I went for here so I'm glad I know better now and will never consider going for a job there in future.
