John Lewis Graduate Scheme 2011 Intake

all they said was that they are also considering all other applicants, and will be in touch soon.

Don't worry, I was told by my career advisor that if a job has a deadline, which JLP has, they will not reply you till the deadline which i think is sometime in November. So I guess we need to be patient.

hope that helps. good luck!

Yeah I guess so!

Which Scheme did you apply for?

I applied to Finance at Head Office, yourself?

I applied to the Buying Scheme.

Hopefully we'll hear back soon. Good Luck

Which other companies have you applied to, any success with passing the initial application stage?

o cool :)

i have also applied to Sainsbury's...got a telephone interview soon but there is not much information about it at all...I am a bit worried..... :/

Well done!

How on earth did you manage to pass the questionnaires? I've done it like 6 times now and still am not a match..... :(

Any tips??? I've kind of given up now.

haha thanks...I am so not ready for the interview though....all they said was that it will be about motivation and achievement....that's all....lol and there is no help on here either :/ so i hope i will do ok.

mate....I did it at least 10 times..... lol don't give up, you will get there. obviously, for the first questionnaire, you really need to be yourself, and also try and match their 'compentencies'...there are 6 of them, you can find them on their graduate website.

for the second one, sainsburys really focus on thier customers...customers always come first. i don't remember how many questions are about customers but you must choose the one that is best for the customers. I don't know if you have been managing anyone before but do think as if you are a manager as well and wanted best for the company, and also minising any conflict within the team.

I know I am talking a lot of rubbish coz you probably know about all these but don't give up. you will get there!!

good luck and let me know how you get on!

I think I really need to sit down and study this!!! My gosh.....lol

Good thing that you told me you've tried before, I was starting to think that I was not good enough. Jheeeeze!!!

Have you finished Uni or are you in your final year?

haha! just try your best. good thing about this is you can do the test as many times you wanted to...its not like a one off so. best of luck!

i m in my final year of study. yourself?

Thanks

I've finished now. Which uni do you attend?

When's your telephone interview? Pls let me know how it goes.

Hey Cricket Girl;

How did your telephone interview with Sainsbury go? Have you heard back from JLP as of yet?

hi Natisco, sorry for late reply, I have been busy with Uni Projects.

yes I have had the sainsburys interview, it didnt go very well, instead of asking me questions about the scheme, they asked me quite a few questions about retailing....i mean i m into retailing but i m no expert!!! I have applied to graduate finance scheme after all....so it didnt go well and i got rejected.

JLP wise, I have heard from them and will be allocated an assessment centre day in December and the assessement centre day will be in January or Feb.

you?? how is the sainsburys application going? and you heard from JLP yet?

That's Ok I understand!

Aww sorry to hear that! Don't worry it just means there's something bigger and better for you out there.

I recently failed a Barclay telephone interview and I was soooooooo P**sed off! But I managed to obtain constructive feedback, which just made me more determined.

NO WAY??? You've heard back from JLP? when did you apply? I have yet to hear back from them.

yeh you are right, just had to stay positive :) the right job will appear!! best of luck for your other applications!!

I have only just heard back from them last week, I applied to them at the end of september, so i had to wait for quite a while before they get back to me. but like i said their deadline is in november so i m sure u will hear from them shortly!! :) keep me updated :)

Hi All,

I got email for online test for JPL and looking for information on type of test etc. any help pls?

Oh and I too tried Sainsbury (Supply Chain grad scheme). Apparently the tests are same for all the schemes (but may be they interpret results differently for different schemes. Well, I tried around 3-4 times and king of give up. I know my situation (2nd test) is perfectly fine as I have worked in the industry and also have SC degree. the first test is damn difficult as there are around 35 different preferences and each preference is repeated with each other. so having one or two preferences throughout is really hard.

and honestly speaking, they should also give a situation as the preference change with the situation...

any tips... apart from going through grad scheme section on their website.

Hi guys,

I've also applied to the John Lewis Finance Grad Scheme and have been invited to the assessment center on Feb 27th. We might be in the same one?

I would love to work for John Lewis, but I have no experience in retail. Do you think this might be vitally important? :/

Hope your applications are all going well!

Lynne

Hi everyone,

Has anyone been invited to the 18th Feb 2011 IT Graduate Scheme ?? I didn't receive any online test link, just applied and got invited straight for the assessment centre. I'm guessing they'll conduct the tests then. Any idea what these may be ?

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you

D

Hi all!

I'm going to an A/C in Feb for the buying scheme in Victoria, is anyone else? I've never been to one before so I'm getting really scared about it!

I've been looking on the net for information on A/Cs in general, but there isn't that much info on John Lewis ones, so i was wondering how, if at all, do they differ from the general format? And also, how it's structured? What tasks are on day one that you need to be sucessful in to get to day two?

Also, in typical nervy girl style, I'm stressing about what to wear since my invite said 'anything but a suit'!!! I'm still planning on going pretty smart, probably along the smart skirt and shirt/blouse line, but yeah, that definately threw me off a bit!!

Anyone else been to/going to the Jan/Feb centres? Care to share your experiences? Eeeeeeeeeeeeek!!

hiya, I have been invited but unfortunately wasnt selected after the assessment but now I have secured a job so I am not that upset about it. I did have a great day and met lots of great people though! there will be trainees with you on the day and have lunch with you during lunch time.

Well, the day will start by meeting and greeting with other people, then will go straight to a test. It is not a normal SHL verbal or reasoning test you would have seen in other applications, it is more financial, judgement and mathematical. But don't worry, just keep on track with your time, you have got like 40 mins to finish quite a lot of questions so be aware of that.

then you will all split up and given different timetable for the day, some will do a one to one interview first, some will do the group discussion exercise, and some will do the case study.

one to one interview is farily standard, and they would have given you tips on the email you received when you received you invitation to the assesement centre. Just make sure you know how to answers those questions given by them. and a few more general competancy questions then you will be fine.

group discussion again you cannot really prepare for that, just see general advice on group exercise on wiki job website or other career websites on how to perform well in a group exercise. All i can tell you is that the exercise is kind of link to John Lewis, so make sure you know a lot about JLP. One girl in my group even mentioned about the John Lewis advert during the discussion! I have seen the advert but just didn't think of talking about it during the discussion! you can see how strong the other candidates are and how well prepared they are! so do find out all the little details you know about John Lewis. Anything! coz you never know when it will be useful to bring it up and able to impress the assessor!

Finally the case study and presentation, again it will be about John Lewis/Waitrose, you only have around 30 mins to read a lot of information and prepare for the presentation/discussion, so use your time wisely. This exercise need a lot of judgement, I think it is very similar to e-tray exercise...its to see how you plan things and make sensible judgement. But instead of doing the exercise on computers like other fims, you need to present your ideas and findings to the interviewer.

Well, that's all! best of luck!! :)

oh that was for Finance post only BTW....I am not sure how buying or other schemes assessment centre are like...sorry! but good luck to everyone! :)

Hey Cricketgirl,

Thanks so much for that, it was the most comprehensive thing i've found so far and it's great to know what to expect! Sorry to hear you didn't get selected, but sounds like you had a good time all the same.

Looking forward to it, not long to go now! :)

Hi there!

I have also been invited to the buying scheme in Victoria on the 2nd of Feb, is that when you are going as well?

I couldn't really find any information either on what's going to happen on the day. It seems to be only group exercise but that would mean having many different ones during the day so I'm not sure quite how it's going to be structured. From what I found it also seems that we will have some sort of presentation first about the scheme and about John Lewis in general and maybe a questionnaire about that. Apparently we will have lunch with trainees so we can ask them everything about what we might end up doing next year.

For the dress code I was pretty shocked as well but I am definitely going to avoid anything too casual.

Only eight days left to prepare!

Hey,

No, I'm going to the one on the 15th so got a little extra time, eeeeek.

going over what I had in my original email it just mentions the group exercises, including some numerical stuff, so I hope i can tackle that ok! I do do some maths in my current job but havent done that much since school so i don't know how testing it will be! It also mentions that there will be one on one interviews on day two, so i dont know if that means there won't be any interviews on day one and you'll only get one if you pass through to day two!

Im also starting to wonder how many people they actually take on for the scheme? I can't remember seeing that anywhere, maybe it depends on the quality of the people they see...

good luck for yours, and let us know how it went! ha! oh and cricketgirl, thanks for that info, i know you said its for a diff scheme but it all helps!

Hey,

Lucky you you got some extra time although I think I'll be glad when it's done!

Ok so from further research I understand that there should be four group exercises on day one only to assess if you're a good team player and that kind of things. I didn't see anything mentioned about numerical tests for day one but again i'm applying for the buying scheme so maybe it is a bit different. But for us there is no one to one interview on day one, that will only be on day two along with a more specialised exercise and some tests, probably numerical and verbal ability.

For my scheme (buying) they seem to have taken only three on board last year. For now we are apparently about 200 candidates from the original 9500 people who applied this year so it's quite good to get to this stage already! And from what I understood we will probably be in the same assessment centre as the merchandising people and for these two schemes we seem to be around 50 left so if we assume half of it for each scheme that would be 25 left for the buying scheme maybe more I'm not exactly sure, this is based on information I found on different places on the Internet and one numbers from last year. Anyway it gives you an idea of wat we still need to achieve!

For the group exercises it will either be a sort of debate in groups of around 6 or something like "Build an igloo out of paper". Knowing that there are four exercises on day one maybe it will be 2 of each.

I will try to tell you more after my assessment centre which is on wednesday (ahhh) but I'm not sure we are allowed to.

Anyway just try to see it as a fun day!

So how did it go anthony2307? i am soooo scared now! out of interest, do you mind me asking what degree you did? I think my main disadvantage now is that I did a basic arts degree as aposed to a design or retail degree which is what most buyers appear to have, but hey ho, still managed to get this ar so maybe my transferable skills will save the day! ha!

Hello everyone, Can anybody tell me what the talent screener will entail? Is it a verbal reasoning test or numerical test?

How is everyone else getting on with applications for the 2012 Grad Buying Scheme at JLP?

Thanks for any advice!

Hi hannah,

I've applied for the finance grad scheme so dont know if its different to the buying one, but i at stage one (after personal details) i had to take a multiple choice question test which had 21 questions. are you talking about the same thing?

Hi Hannah,

I have got to complete the talent screener for the buying scheme too this week. I have been wondering the same thing, numerical, verbal or what?! I take it you have done this now? Would you mind telling me what to expect please. I hope you got through to the next stage!

Thanks for your help

HI Hannah and Amber!

I have applied for the Buyer Grad Scheme aswell, and have to complete the talent screener. I was just going to practice some tests on the SHL website. Not sure what it will involve but is it bad if you dont complete all the questions in the time given?

Also, i have no experience in buying, and do BA Events Management, nothing related to this! What are you or did you study at uni? and do you have experience? I'm just applying for as many grad schemes as possible atm, but this one looks exciting! Hadnt thought about it before now!

Has anyone managed to do the talent screener test yet.. Just wondering what this entails ? I am practicing on SHL but do you reckon it will be a mix of all of them tests ?

Hi, everyone, can anybody tell me that when we can be invited to the online test . Is it after we submitting my application forms? The deadline means the final date to submit application form or finish the whole online test? thx a lot

hey did u get the job?

hi all,

i did the talent screener test last week and it was nothing like the test you can practice on the shl website. it's not a cognitive, verbal or numeracy test. all you had to do was to answer how you would react in a specific situation. i didn't think the test was very difficult although sometimes i got the impression they wanted to trick you into a particular answer so you had to read the questions carefully and consider your answer.

a day later i got an email telling me i now had to answer the "personal qualities questions".... and still have another week to complete the next stage.

good luck.

I just completed the 'personal qualities questions' and received an email saying there is a high volume of applicants so please be patient as it may take weeks to process your application.

To be honest, after finding out on target jobs that they only want 6 people for the finance scheme...I wanted to throw in the towel. However, as I had started on the application process I completed it...... tough competition considering they have loads of students already working there part time while studying....

On the other hand....who's to say I can't?

Grrrrrr

Good luck.

Hi all,

Has anyone had a final interview with JL finance scheme? (or has an upcoming final interview)