Argos interview questions

Applied online and received a telephone call about 4 weeks later. Sourcing specialist was very engaging and positive and did a good job of 'talking up' the role. Also outlined the salary (£45-50K) but given my particular skills and experience, suggested that £52-53K would be likely and "between me and you, we could probably go to £55k". All sounding good. A Skype interview with the Hiring Manager was arranged for the following week. The Skype interview time and date was then changed. Come the day, the Hiring Manager couldn't get through to me on Skype and called instead. We had a good chat, although I was surprised at the pretty facile nature of the questions until I was told that this interview was aimed at whittling down 5 or 6 people to just 2 who would be required to travel to Milton Keynes for a final face-to-face interview. Given the distance of the base location for this role to MK, I was surprised at this. There was no mention of whether this would be paid for by Sainsbury Argos Group or whether it was at personal expense. I asked some questions about the nature of the role (travel required, office location, types of projects) and was further surprised that there was some uncertainty about what the job holder would be required to do (because of very recent restructuring). The Hiring Manager said she wanted to move fast in appointing someone and that I could expect feedback in a week or so. Almost 3 weeks elapsed without further word before I emailed the Sourcing Specialist who had initially contacted me asking where we stood. To be told that upon consideration, the organisation had decided not to hire anyone as they were no longer sure they needed the post was something of a surprise, although upon reflection, it goes someway to explaining the uncertain answers to my questions. I do not believe they were intending to inform me of this decision had I not contacted them first. Overall I was not impressed.

Interview was very pleasant, was made to feel completely at ease (was more of an informal chat.) Everything ran smoothly and very professional compared to other chaotic interviews I've had in the past. The 'interview' was split into two parts, a 1:1 interview and a 1:1 driving assessment . The only frustrating thing was they was on separate days (4 days apart) - driving was 1.5 hours and included road sign identification, driving on different types of roads at different speeds, vehicle checks and parking/manoeuvring. There was a few logical questions as well like the assessor made you pull up and explain to him the process of what you'd do when you left the van, which side of the road you'd get out of, which way you'd back into a side road etc etc... common sense definitely goes a long way!