Contacted by a Recruitment Consultant. The recruitment process is over 3 stages, a group recruit, a one-to-one with a Regional Operations Director and finally a store trial. The group recruit I went to had about 15 candidates and consisted of an ice breaker, a group exercise, a basic maths test and a group interview. The ice breaker intro basically involves you introducing yourself in about 3 sentences including name, current employer and work history plus one interesting fact about yourself. For the group exercise you are split into small groups of 4 or 5 depending on the size of the group. You are given a hypothetical scenario which individually you are given 10-15 minutes to read through, write down what action you would take and then, in your group discus your findings and agree a collective course of action. The scenario we had was the one where 6 people from diverse backgrounds and different life experiences have to be rescued from a cave. Due to conditions the best case scenario means only 5 can be rescued. There is no correct answer. This all about your ability to put across your point of view, understand other people's point of view and generally agree to disagree if necessary to gain group consensus. HINT! This is not a competition so talking for the sake of talking will get you nowhere. Asking quieter members of the group what their views are, summarising and keeping an eye on the time will score you points. The maths test is very basic arithmetic of about 20 questions in 5 mins. The group interview involves the regional ops director or whoever is hosting the session asking questions to the group about Aldi and the general retail environment. Obviously you need to brush up on this and prepare a couple of questions to throw back at the end. HINT! They love talking about their phenomenal growth and new store openings. Also think about why this has happened and what they'll need to do to retain their new found customers. HINT! If you have not already done so go and visit at least two Aldi stores and take note of product availability, staffing levels, queue lengths, amount of checkouts open, politeness, friendliness of the staff, number of pallets on the shop floor, ease of shop, car parking spaces etc. The second stage of the process is the one-to-one with a Regional Director. This is more a conversation about you, your work history, your retail knowledge and your aspirations. This is not a competency based interview but be able to discuss you resume in detail. I was offered a store trial at this stage and told I'd be contacted within a week. However I didn't hear anything and had to do all the chasing. At this point all the professionalism they had demonstrated prior to this fell away. The store trial is supposed to involve spending time with a store manager where you are given the chance to really see what it's like working there, a chance for you to see if you would like to work there and an interview with an area manager. On my trial the Store Manager had something else planned and didn't even acknowledge my presence let alone explain or apologise for this. Instead I was given a tour of the store by a Store Assistant, asked to help work some stock and help tidy up. After an hour of this the Area Manager came in and again we had a similar interview/conversation about my work experience and retail in general. I was told that I'd hear from them in the next couple of days. After a week I spoke with the Recruitment Consultant who told me they did not wish to further my application. I didn't receive a thanks but no thanks letter from Aldi.