Hi, I’m applying for a part-time job at ??? and I was wondering what you think the best answers to these questions are:
You are replenishing a section of shelves in the store which you need to have completed before your break. Your manager approaches you and asks you to take your break an hour earlier as one of your team members needs to leave early today.
[ol]
[li]Agree to change the time of your break and ask if a team member can finish replenishing the section.[/li][li]Tell your manager that you cannot change the time of your break as you need to finish replenishing the shelves.[/li][li]Agree to change the time of your break and check with your manager that you can finish replenishing the section after your break.[/li][/ol]
You have been replenishing the shelves during your shift. It has been a quiet morning and the store has not had many customers. You notice customer at one of the checkouts is struggling to bag their groceries.
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[li]Leave your position and help the customer to bag their groceries.[/li][li]Find a colleague to help the customer to bag their groceries.[/li][li]Take the opportunity to have your break while there are few customers.[/li][/ol]
You are just about to go on your lunch break. A customer asks you to help them find a product. Helping the customer will mean taking a later break than you had planned.
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[li]Quickly tell the customer where the main products are and go on to take your meal break.[/li][li]Tell the customer that they should find another member of staff to help as you are about to take your meal break.[/li][li]Help the customer to find the product and ask your manager if the time of your meal break can be changed to later because you were helping a customer.[/li][/ol]
Your manager asks you to cover your team member’s work as they have called out sick. You are already busy with your own tasks and are not sure that you will have time to take on your team members work too.
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[li]Finish your work first and then fit your team member’s tasks in if you have time.[/li][li]Agree on the most important tasks for the day with your manager.[/li][li]Concentrate on the tasks that are your normal daily responsibilities.[/li][/ol]
These were some of the questions. I bolded the ones that I thought were the best answers. What do you guys think (and “why” on the questions that you think are tricky?). Thanks. I want to make sure that I’m thinking about the questions, overall, from the right perspective.
I think you picked good answers, except for question 3. I’ve never been the one reviewing applications, but I think what they want to see is flexibility on what tasks you’ll do, willingness to help others (co-workers and customers), and ability to deal with challenges such as having more to do than you have time to do it in (question four, I’d have answered similarly). On the question I didn’t agree with you on, I’d have picked the “help the customer find the product, then talk to the manager about break timing” option. You want to show that giving good customer service (which keeps customers happy and coming back to shop there) is something you’ll do.
My opinion is that for low-level wage positions like this one, the answer that involves asking your supervisor or following the employee handbook to the letter is probably the right one, unless you can clearly show why another answer is obviously very superior.
I agree with Seanette with respect to question 3: Help the customer, then ask if you can re-schedule your break accordingly. The only caveat that comes to mind is that if you’re a minor (or if you will be working with lots of minors), break times may be carefully scheduled to comply with child labor laws, and you don’t want to stay on the clock an extra 10 minutes if it will mean you or somebody else violating. However, all of the jobs I’ve had where this might be an issue built at least a 15 minute buffer into the schedule to avoid child labor violations, and it’s sort of a special circumstance that management should be dealing with anyway. I’d say the general takeaway message from this question is that the satisfaction of a customer is more important than your momentary inconvenience.
As an aside, I always have a chuckle at how these sorts of questions imply that you’re going to be busy enough that having a few extra duties thrown into your shift is going to put you behind on your work, when all of the entry-level store-restocking type jobs I’ve had have involved standing around looking for something, anything to do for probably a couple hours every day.
For these sort of questions you should pay attention to the answers that contain words like “ask your manager”.
Question #1, the answer is #3, agree to be flexible and consult your manager.
Question #2, your answer is correct, take care of the customer’s needs first.
Question #3, the answer is #3. Help the customer and ask your manager.
Question #4, answer #2, again ask your manager.
They are not looking for independant thinkers. They are looking for people who will take care of the customer first, be flexible, and *consult your manager *when things deviate from the routine.
They want to avoid the chaos of having everyone free lance and do what they think they should be doing. If you allow that pretty soon you’ll find the hardware guy in the garden center and the garden center guy pumping gas.
Consult your manager if you disagree with my responses.