Some job interview!

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I was reading about this the other day, personally don't see the problem! Think the guy moaning needs to grow up myself.

The job is a retail job, you need to be able to have fun and interact well with people, I've done a lot of work in retail and too often you get people who look great on paper but are awful at interacting with customers. Sure it's a very different way to interview but don't see too much difference to this than to some team building type exercises and so forth.

Admittedly maybe a little warning would have been the right thing to do, but in a retail job you want to see how well people can interact. All sorts of things occur working retail and you want to know they can handle customers and have some fun and make that experience enjoyable for who ever walks in the door! The guy moaning sounds like a bit of a wet cloth to me personally.

 

Really? spent my first 6 years in IT as front line support and retail, never once had to dance with one single person during work hours. That is not relevant at all and the interviewer was doing it to amuse themselves.

 

Not sayin that you have to dance to customers,
Saying that the Interviewers would be using these sorts of things to see how you are with people.

I've done plenty of things similar to this in team bonding exercises etc, really don't see the problem. Group activity to see how you deal with one another and what you are like as part of a team, if he was so difficult and awkward and embarrassed then probably not suited to the team they had.

As said maybe a little warning should have been given, but I know of similar things happening at a lot of retail type outlets, not in IT, just retail in general. I used to work for Greene King and a lot of pubs I know of did very similar things, especially if they were refurbing or new openings!

 

Perhaps its just me, ask me to do the team building exercises okay, ask me to dance in front of people and I'd break out in a cold sweat

 

Don't like the way it mentioned strongly that he was a graduate ... was it like being a graduate makes you too good for a job?

 

I think it's stupid as dancing (for this role anyway) has absolutely nothing to do with the job. All for giggles for HR/interviewers really. A team building exercise is different which I see nothing wrong.

 

Agreed product knowledge is also important, but likewise next time you get bad customer service in curry's from someone just throwing technical spec at you of the latest washing machine or whatever, most of which may go straight over your head then your in the same position really if you can't talk to the guy and he's really uncomfortable and socially quite awkward.

To be fair, most people I know that are likely to shop in somewhere like Curry's don't need sales people to give them all the technical spec, because to be quite honest they don't care. Anyone who really does care in my experience will A) do their own research online and B) not shop at Curry's because of the price.

The group dancing wasn't the whole interview either, just part of it, I'm sure to assess a part of the candidates skills! There was obviously other parts of the interview during which he would have had the opportunity to show case his product knowledge.

This sort of thing goes on quite a lot and I'm still genuinely surprised by the coverage it's got, had it not been a time of economical hardship and fewer jobs about I doubt anyone would even know about it!

 

Yeah I know, all the more reason the person needs to be socially able to relate to alsorts of people. Lol.

You can teach almost anyone to be able to explain some of the tech, however teaching someone inter personal skills is much more difficult.

Fair enough if he was going to be a buyer for Curry's or something and really needed to be up to date, but for a sales person at a local store I just think you could learn everything you need to know as long as you got 2 brain cells to run together.

They had no choice but apologise really, I see they've been found out for doing it before as well though, which doesn't surprise me at all.

 

Seeing as my experience of Curry's sales people has been that no matter how good their inter personal skills their technical knowledge has been absolutely appalling I'd say interviewing for technical knowledge should be far more important than making them dance. Considering one of their sales reps went as far as inventing words to try and sell me a TV....

 

If they told me to dance I'd walk out, money cant buy self-respect.

 

It would of been great if he said, no stick your job, but then moonwalked out of the office

Ed