Interviewing Candidates

Prepared by: Moustafa Mahmoud Ghanim

Interview Page 1

An interview with fresh food department head in retail hyper market.

(A) Situational interview: It is a series of job-related questions that focus on how the candidate would behave in a given situation. 1- How you will act when the wastage reports have high percentage in fruit and vegetable section?
I will check the daily order for all items especially for those items which have high wastage percentage. Sure it will be more than supposed to purchase. I will check the wastage procedures. I will check the wasted items to divide it into 3 categories, one for those which we can resell it again with low price and the second category for those which we can transfer to catering section to reuse it again in cooking product, the third category which we must waste them. By that we can reduce wastage with 70%.

2- What is your act when the butchery section display for lamb meat is always empty?
Check orders from supplier surely it will be less than suppose. Check the planogram for meat items.

3- What is your act when you notice high turnover in employee in section bakery?
Check with bakery section manager the way he deals with his staff. Conduct meeting with sections staff to hear from them their problem. Recheck the job description for bakery staff Check the incentive policy. Check staff salary policy.

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4- What is your act when you notice that there are high percentages of strawberry tart in pastry refrigerator damage? Check with maintenance section the refrigerators. Check with pastry section manager the ingredients of tarts Check with display staff the ways they display the tarts. 5- What is your act when you find cheese section didnt achieve his target during the first quarter? Check with section manger the budget. Check with section manger how he will cover this shortage and how he will
compensate that in the second quarter.

Check items sales, to see if there are some items are slow moving and how
we can sell that

Check section promotion plan.

(B)

Behavioral interview:

It is a series of job-related questions that focus on how the candidate reacted to actual situations in the past. 1- Give me a real situation happen with you with staff unconformity with company policy? And what is your react?
One staff from butchery section insisted for not wearing his cloves during serve our customer. I conduct meeting with him to explain the important of wearing cloves during serve the customer and the hygiene benefits which it will not reflect on customer only but it will reflect on him also. And I explain for him by wearing cloves we can reduce a lot of problems and at the end of meeting I warning him if it we repeated again, there will be penalty.

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2- Are you passed with any situation with governmental communities check your department? And what is your react?
Yes, there are hygiene community come to check the expire date of some of our items. I meeting with them and take them in a tour in our storage area to check the expire date and they found everything ok. But they advise me to check the expire date in a daily basis.

3- Give an example of a goal you reached and tell me how you achieved it?
I ware having a target to achieve 95% in quality check report at the end of week check. I plan with my section mangers a daily program of cleaning and hygiene according to our daily work program to achieve 99 % with giving more important to cleaning for small details. And give section managers instructions to give me a full report at the end of each day with the cleaning and hygiene program. And what we achieved and what we will complete next day. At the end of the week and when quality teams check my department they found that we follow the hygiene program in a good way for that we achieved 97% with 2 % over our target.

4- What do you do when your schedule is interrupted? Give an example of how you handle it?
I reschedule it according to the priority, give more important to the urgent point which it cant postponed and achieve it in its time and for those which can be postponed , I postponed them to achieve them at the weekend which I will cancel my weekend to achieve them to entre my next week in clean schedule.

5- Have you handled a difficult situation with a co-worker? How?

Yes, I faced a difficult situation with staff which they objectors about their salary. I conduct meeting with them, and I promise them to check job description and salary policy and also the incentive policy. But they must complete their work and from them to check with me that. As a way of trust.

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(c) Job knowledge questions

1- What is the suppose margin we should achieve in bakery and pastry section?
From 45% to 50 %

2- What is the acceptable range of wastage percentage in fruit and vegetable section?
From 3% to 4%

3- What is the time you need to be ready for opening if you know the opening is at 9:00 am?
2 hours approximately.

4- How many of staff you need in bakery sections to achieve 45 items to cover the section around 3 shifts?
From 25 to 30 staff.

5- How you calculate the selling price for an items with purchasing price 10 EG. Pound to achieve 10% margin?
Purchasing price \ 1 Margin 10\ 0.90 = 11.12 EG. Pound

If the candidate answers 13 questions of those 15 questions in the right way by that he achieves 86%, we can consider him as accepted candidate but he need training program.

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