Hi,
I had a work sample with Tesco last week.
I have to say I was not impressed with the manner in which it was carried out.
The work itself was fine but I found that the managers who I was paired with, didn't even know why I was there and as such didn't really care.
I was left waiting half an hour when I first arrived until a manager came down to greet me which I did find a bit surprising since Tesco are always talking about time management and things like this on their graduate site. But this was fine I know unexpected problems can arise and have to be dealt with.
Then I was placed with the one of the non-food managers. Seemed nice enough guy. But left me just standing in his section of the store saying he would be 5mins, returned over 30mins later. I had only just arrived in the store and was given no instructions as to what to do. I ended up just talking to different staff members and asking them questions.
Manager finally returned without an apology. But I just accepted that. Rest of morning was pretty smooth, just working on the floor and helping out were needed. Except the manager did keep leaving me with other people, which was a bit pointless as I was there to shadow him.
Then lunch time came. Same manager decided to leave work early to go and fix the tyre on his car, didn't tell me this and made no effort to pair me up with another manager for the remainder of the afternoon.
So I ended up arranging it for myself and shadowed the online manager for about half and hour. Then the counters manager for a while.
Also beware Tesco can randomly stop and search possessions of any person in the store who isn't a customer. Managers have a certain quota to reach a week and have to do so in pairs of one male one female. I was with managers carrying out this task. So I had to empty pockets and have locker check. While there was no real problem and I understand the necessity of such procedures I did find it slighlly off-putting. After all I was a potential employee and some people might take offence to being made to feel like a thief on their first direct contact with a potential employer.
Again I just accepted it. Final thing that day is a brief interview with personnel manager and store manager. The store manager was on holiday on my work sample so the deputy store manager sat in.
This was the first time I had spoken to either apart from maybe 2 mins with the Deputy earlier that afternoon. Only lasted a few mins, which I was very surprised about as it was these 2 that are going to be making the decision.
Overall I have to say that I found the store I did my work sample with quite disorganised and unprofessional given they would have been well aware that graduates would be visiting the store. In fact it quite put me off the idea of working for Tesco. Think I might try one of their competitors instead.