The first step was an online profile, afterwards I went through a telephone interview in which the general role was explained and I was aked some questions about myself and my previous experiences. we then scheduled a second telephone interview in which I was asked to describe a situation where I had to go the extra mile for a customer. the second question was to describe a situation where I had to overcome a challenge. These went well as I had been told in the first telephone call what sort of questions I should expect. After passing this stage I was scheduled for a face-to-face interview and role playing at HSBC. We had a few minutes where I talked about myself and my interviewer explained how we would be carrying out the role play exercise. I was seated at a desk, given a headpiece and a guide book with notes about a few simple situations, with some example texts. All was pretty straightforward and well explained. So I got a call from the interviewer, pretending to be a customer and we were off on a good start, I had no problems reading the texts and helping the customer with their first few queries. At one point I got a bit muddled up as I guess I had misunderstood one of the paragraphs, and guided the customer in the direction that I thought was correct. After the exercise I was told that I did not pass this stage because although my talking was clear and got most parts correct, I gave wrong information in one section and the customer had had to prompt me more than once to get the info they were asking for. I was a bit surprised as it didn't seem like such a big problem to me as it wouldn't come out as an issue after I got my training and learnt about the procedures at HSBC. However, I respect the process and that they didn't feel I was fit for the job.
