On the receiving end: Interviews.

Surprisingly enough no less than two days after last week's blog post was I asked to come in for a group interview opportunity for a large market chain. Today I had the interview. I could never have imagined myself sitting in a large hall with people unknown to me, discussing how to survive a zombie apocalypse in a supermarket... But today exactly that happened. Nothing could have prepared me for the absurdity that was today's interviewing methods. I expected a room with a small group of people, speaking to business managers about why they wanted to be apart of the esteemed company they came to be interviewed for, being greeted by conversation of zombie survival was in no way even a semblance of what I could have imagined.

I'm sure by now you all are as intrigued as I was today sitting in that room. So I'll elaborate to the best of my ability as to how today's interview played out.

It began at ten in the morning, I arrived a cool fifteen minutes early. I was one of the last to arrive. Slightly nervous I realised I was one of the younger applicants, being 18 in a room surrounded by middle to older aged women and men lead me to wonder If it was even worth coming to the interview today. Spoiler: it was definitely worth it.

As the clock struck ten, a female supervisor clad in business attire ushered the crowd of us applicants into the second story of a community sports hall. We were assigned tables and sat down.

The interview process began as how I'd assumed procedure planned it, each table was assigned a manager from the store franchise who looked over groups of about nine or ten applicants. They introduced themselves. To give an insight into the amount of applicants in the room, there were about ten tables that were all completely filled.

Once our assigned assessor/manager had introduced themselves it was our turn to give our introductions. Name, past experience and reason for wanting to work followed by a fun fact about yourself. At this point I was thinking "ah all as expected, too easy..." Boy was I wrong."

Once all our introductions were done it was time for a basic sales speech from each person in your group about a chosen product. Once again, normal as feathers on a chicken, nothing out of the ordinary, cool.

Then the zombie apocalypse began. The entirety of the exercises that had to be completed before our interviews came to a close, all had to do with the possibility of a zombie apocalypse near the store and what to do in each related situation.

I was momentarily stunned...

There were three tasks overall that had relations with this fairly odd situation, needless to say though it was fantastical and fun to the point that it didn't even feel like an interview anymore. This segment took about one hour out of the ninety minute session.

As a group we had to choose a single product from each available aisle to be used as our "survival pack", followed by the task of choosing the safest aisle to bunker down in as the apocalypse passes over us. We chose the clothing aisle. I'd go in depth for the reason behind our choice but damn it's just too long a story.

Finally the last zombie apocalypse themed activity was the choices of which team member suited each roles, based on their skills and characteristics, funnily enough I was considered the team leader by the group. A group made up of six middle aged women, to girls around my age and a 53 year old man. I was happy to lead my group of imaginary survivors until the very end of our interviews.

Overall it was nothing like what I was expecting, but an amazing experience with interesting people who all wanted to achieve the same goal. Getting a job.

With this little experience coming to a close all I can hope for now is the call saying "Congratulations you've got the job."

Hopefully soon Ill become a functioning member of society, after this fantastic experience.

A word from the survivor.

Josh.