Assessment Centre

We’ll be in touch soon after your Assessment Centre to give you detailed feedback on your performance. You’ll also have the opportunity to ask any questions you have about the day, and about your assessment.

Your interview will be on a 1-1 basis via a virtual meeting. We’ll ask you questions about why you think a Morrisons Graduate or Degree Apprenticeship is right for you, and we’ll talk about your background and other experiences, both in and out of work.

Before the day, think about why you’re passionate about joining Morrisons. We want you to demonstrate that you have a solid understanding of our ways of working and what we stand for as a business. Take a look at the rest of our website, follow our social media feeds, and visit our stores. You should be aiming to show your interviewer that you’re serious about being part of our business. We want to understand your motivation and be able to see your ambition for the scheme and your future.

Virtual interviews bring their own challenges, but as with face to face interviews, it’s important to make a good impression in those first few seconds. So, be on time, smile confidently, introduce yourself clearly, and try to stay relaxed.

Using the STAR method (Situation/Task/Action/Results) to answer your interview questions is a great idea. It will help you tell an easy-to-follow and factual story with each answer, that begins with a clear purpose and ends with a well defined resolution. Don’t forget that you’re here to demonstrate why you’re the best choice for the role.

We’ll ask you questions based on the things you’ve done in the past, so it’s a good idea to think about lots of examples of previous successful experiences in education or in work. As before, you’re here to show us why we should choose you, so your examples should be geared towards this and you should tailor them to fit the question.

One of the most successful interview techniques is to build rapport with your interviewer - and this even works with virtual interviews. So, think about your body language - use your hands, but don’t overdo it, avoid fiddling with jewellery, don’t slouch in your chair, and maintain eye contact. Remember to try to control your nerves too - staying calm will help you answer questions confidently. And listen carefully but don’t forget that you can pause to think before answering, and even come back to questions later if you need to.

Before your role play exercise, we’ll send you a brief that contains all the information you’ll need to be able to take part effectively. You’ll then have a short time to prepare, before joining the role play situation via a virtual meeting.

Your role play exercise will replicate a real-life situation at Morrisons, and you should take the time to fully understand the brief without rushing. Above all, you should know what role we’ll expect you to play, along with the roles that everyone else in your group is playing, too.

Remember that most role play exercises don’t give everything away in the brief, and some details are often left out on purpose to give the exercise space to develop, and to encourage you to think on your feet. So, try to uncover information that isn’t included in the brief by asking open questions (that don’t have a yes or no answer). For example, you could start your questions with: “Tell me about…”, or “Can you expand on…”, or “Could you talk to me about…”.

We’ll expect you to have a clear plan, but you should also be ready to let the exercise unfold and flow naturally - just like a real conversation. This is often the sign of a successful role play exercise. So, don’t be too rigid in how you approach it as things could change at a moment’s notice. And remember we’re here to find out how you react to unexpected circumstances, so your assessor could drop a curveball into the exercise at any time.

Making notes is important and can help you a lot, but don’t forget that too many notes can have the opposite effect and be confusing. A good rule of thumb is to have just one piece of paper for your notes, and you should also organise your notes into bullet points for easy reference.

You’ll only have a short time to prepare, so try to do this as efficiently as possible. We’re looking for an ability to stay relaxed during the exercise and we’ll expect you to be confident and natural throughout. And the last thing to bear in mind is that the assessment will begin as soon as you enter the exercise!

One of your virtual sessions will be a case study presentation. We’ll share some information and data with you and give you time to review and analyse before asking you to prepare a short presentation on your findings. 

You’ll join a virtual meeting call along with an assessor for your presentation, and we’ll want to hear about why you made your choices and the data you used to make them. We’ll also ask questions about your approach and rationale, too.

Before your case study presentation, there’ll be a planning stage which will give you the opportunity to think about the structure of your presentation. What should you consider? Should you talk about financing, or regulations, or how to engage employees or other stakeholders? What about marketing? Or customer needs? The best place to start is to put some rough headings together, and the rest should flow from there.

Your case study presentation will be a 1-1 discussion with an assessor, but you will have time to prepare. Remember, there are no right and wrong answers when it comes to planning your pitch. What’s most important is that you decide on your stance or position, before developing your pitch and powerful supporting arguments around it.

As you give your case study presentation, we’ll be trying to find out how well you understand how our markets impact us, and what our key aspirations are in those markets. That means knowing what’s going on right now in food retail, and how that has driven the choices you’ve made while planning your presentation.

Try to keep your poise during your presentation - we know it’s a tough challenge to complete, and we don’t expect you to be right 100% of the time. One way to do this is to communicate clearly, and it’s a good idea to spend time on your introduction and ending so you can start and finish strongly. And remember to keep smiling as this goes a long way towards building rapport with your assessor.

Don’t panic if you think there’s too much to read in terms of supporting materials - it’s better to have a good overview of everything, rather than an in-depth understanding of part of it. The most important thing is to make sure you understand what you need to do to complete the task itself - and if you need to pause to think about an answer, that’s ok. And as always, try to enjoy the experience - successful candidates often tell us that they thought these exercises were fun.

During the day, you’ll take part in a group exercise. We use these to make sure you’re able to work effectively as part of a team and you’ll take part with 4-6 other candidates. 

Before it begins, we’ll share a brief with you and you’ll have time on your own to prepare. When we’re ready to start, you’ll join a virtual meeting with your assessor and other candidates, and then it will be up to you to make an impact.

During the day, you’ll take part in a group exercise, and we’ll be looking for an ability to listen to everyone’s opinion and respond to what they have to say. We’ll also expect you to be able to share your ideas clearly and confidently too, and give everyone else the chance to have their say without dominating the discussion.

Your group exercise will give you the opportunity to contribute your own ideas while building on others’, and we want to see and hear you using positive language to promote them. It’s all about thinking outside of the box and suggesting new and innovative ideas. And you’ll also need to take a democratic approach to making decisions on which ideas are the best, too.

You should be prepared to work as part of a team during the exercise, and that means being able to engage with and talk to everyone in your group. Remember to ask everyone for opinions, encourage others to take part, and make sure everyone is able to take a turn in getting their points across.

You should think about how you’ll demonstrate that you understand what we need - we may ask you to summarise your understanding before we get started. So, don’t be afraid to listen to what others think and ask questions if you need to - it’s important that everyone’s on the same page.

Remember, you’ll be working as part of a team, so we’ll be looking to you to stay positive and help keep everyone moving. Motivational language will make a big impact here, so try saying things like “that was brilliant”, and “we’re nearly there… let’s get this finished”. It’s also partly about keeping an eye on time effectively too, so that as a group you are able to achieve the task completely.

Throughout the day, you’ll complete a range of virtual exercises including a group exercise, a case study presentation, a formal interview and a role play exercise (depending on the scheme). And, you’ll have the chance to meet with lots of different people from across our business.

You can expect a busy day, which means you’ll have a lot to prepare. You’ll be able to do much of your preparation before the day, but there will also be opportunities to prepare for individual exercises before they begin.

The following videos can help you make sure you’re ready for the day.

No two Assessment Centres are the same, so we’ll be in touch before yours begins to make sure you’re up to speed with what will happen on the day.

Assessment Centres on different days often have different start times, but we will send you a Google Meet invite for the introduction at the beginning of the day and will show you how to access the different exercises so you know what to expect and what you'll need. 

It’s important to find a quiet space for all of your sessions, and you should make sure the wifi signal is strong there, too. We recommend somewhere quiet with no distractions - especially behind you - as these could distract you and your assessor.

We’ll be in touch to let you know what you’ll need for the day, and you should make sure you have everything we suggest close to hand. The kind of things that might be useful include a pen, paper, calculator, and some water or something else to drink.

Even though this is a virtual assessment, it’s still important to make a good first impression. So, treat it like a face-to-face interview, and think about what you’d wear to one of those - a smart top or shirt is essential.

We recommend clicking on your invite links before your sessions to make sure they work, and double checking that both the microphone and camera on your computer are ok. You should also think about ways to keep track of time and maybe even set an alarm to let you know when time is up while you’re preparing for your assessment exercises.

And finally, remember to relax and enjoy the experience as much as you can - working at Morrisons is fun, and we want your assessment to be the same.