Have many of you here had to sit those annoying, lengthy behavioural questionnaires which most retail employers are now using to sift out candidates? I have completed loads of them and find them exceedingly difficult to score the requiste marks in.

What is especially frustrating is that you know you have answered the questions sensibly (e.g. being polite to the customer etc.), yet you still get the annoying rejection.

Is there a special technique for passing one of these darned things? Because if there is, I'd really like to know!

There was some interesting advice given by kittykat on the 'Asda Jobs in Bromborough' thread yesterday, if you look further down this page.

https://www.wikiwirral.co.uk/forums...sda_jobs_Bromborough_thi.html#Post573509

Urgh seriously? A thread about this? If you're not passing them there's a reason for that.

Its not quite as easy as that, if the answers required are the obvious ones then most people would pass and the concept of cutting down (sifting) the number of applications wouldn't happen.

At the end of the day you have to pre-empt what answers they want, which is unknown.

There are a lot of possible conflicts in what they are looking for eg self-initiative versus team working, customer focus versus time constraints, flexibility versus guidelines/rules, assertiveness versus empathy etc etc.

I remember one questionnaire which had been tried and proven that I was given but I struggled to complete it in time. After, I did some research into the test and found the authors and their notes, including the statement that the test was an hour long to reduce any time pressure which would severely distort the results. But of course, someone that knew better had changed the time to 30 minutes thinking it would just make it harder and it would cream of the better candidates - wrong!

Cheat!!

You have to give them the answers they want, not the answers you think they want.Cheat Cheat Cheat.

It also helps greatly if you already have relatives working for the company. Nepotism is rife in retail.