☛ Body Shop want someone who is going to deliver sales results and promote their values. Find out as much as possible about the products especially for the shop floor trial.

☛ Be prepared. Know the company and its competitors. Know the retail industry.

☛ Don't go in not knowing why you want to work in retail.

☛ Prepare answers to common questions in advance.

☛ Make sure you know exactly where to go for the interview.

☛ Interviewers were pretty friendly. You could make a joke with them.

☛ Come prepared to be confronted.

☛ Be confident!

☛ Ensure you have many examples to give in the interview – competency questions.

☛ Make sure you see if they're right for you!

☛ Not at all daunting so don't be at all worried. There are no questions designed to trip you up.

☛ The assessments were deliberately organised to put pressure on you time-wise. The point of most of the assessments didn't seem to be getting to the correct answer but seeing how you got there - so bear this in mind. One or two of the candidates tried too hard to impress and were very overbearing when it came to the group exercises - I'm not sure that this is what the assessors were looking for and it certainly didn't make them popular with the other candidates!

☛ The assessment centre was incredibly well organised, though at times the assessments ran over time which meant that scheduled breaks didn't really happen. It is a very very tiring and long day so be prepared! The assessors were not actually from BT but from a recruitment consultancy hired by BT. They did not have access to any of the information given previously to BT by the candidates so each person was essentially equal in their eyes at the start of the day.

☛ Questions I asked included:

☛ How do Lidl manage to break into other markets?

☛ Would we all start off as store managers?

☛ What's the staff turnover like?