Asda Magic

Asda does its job interviews in two-hour group sessions, which they call ‘Asda Magic’. I’ve just got back from one. To kick off, we introduced ourselves, answering questions such as ‘which two items would you take with you to a desert island’, and ‘who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with’. This confirmed that most people like MP3 players and dislike Simon Cowell.

I guess they were trying to find out more about our personalities; the company seems very concerned that their employees are positive and enthusiastic people. While doing group exercises, we were watched by seven senior staff, who observed our behaviour and mannerisms, taking notes. They tested our keenness to the absolute maximum with long, poorly acted safety videos, which explained that it’s not wise to use broken equipment or walk in front of moving vehicles. There was an extended metaphor about how your back is like a doughnut, and lifting in the wrong way can make the jam come out.

Then another odd test: we were put in teams of two, and had to act out a scene in which one person played a customer wanting to buy something. The other person happened to have the right product in their hand, and had to explain its benefits by reading them off the box. I played the customer, and think I convinced the audience that I genuinely wanted some screen wipes.

It seems we got off fairly lightly. After a final session in which we had to walk around the shop looking at stuff, the two staff with us reminisced about their own ‘Asda Magic’ sessions. “I had to design a doughnut”, one said. The other replied: “We had to re-arrange some cards to make up a song about Asda, then sing it to everyone.”

Special Skills

I’m used to jobs which ask for bilingual applicants, but this one took me by surprise. It’s for a ‘Dog Grooming Stylist’ in New Malden. Applicants need “excellent communication skills [which] will be fully utilised as you will be dealing with customers and their pets on a daily basis.” For an example of how to talk to animals, see this scene from Tommy Wiseau’s classic film The Room.

Candidates also need competence in ‘all aspects of grooming’. The ad helpfully notes that: “grooming your own pet does not qualify as professional experience”. I guess I'll have to tear up my applications for taxi driver, dishwasher and chef.

Job Titles 2

Many companies seem to be making simple job titles more confusing by adding the word ‘operative’. One I often see is ‘cleaning operative’. This seems odd. The point of the suffix ‘-er’ is that it lets us take a verb, like ‘to clean’, and turn it into a noun describing someone who does the action regularly, i.e. ‘cleaner’.

The same applies to the jobs of ‘landscape gardening operative’, ‘building services operative’, ‘welding operative’, ‘postal operative’, and of course, ‘customer service operative’.

Apple has an even better name for its shop staff: ‘genuises’. They are expected to: “be able to take the thorniest questions and answer them in plain old English. Troubleshoot hardware and software. Provide basic customer training. And perform timely repairs.” They do not need to prove the Reimann Hypothesis, beat Gary Kasparov at chess, or cure Aids. ‘Geniuses’ only have to know their way around Apple products, which are designed to be as easy as possible to use anyway.

Job titles

One of the many great things about Kraftwerk is their modesty: they call themselves ‘music-workers’ rather than musicians. Notice the contrast with some of these extravagant descriptions, all for recently advertised jobs:

‘Collaboration Platform Solutions Architect’ (Cisqo Systems). The ad helpfully explains that someone with such a job: “correlates business issues around technology and processes and is able to create an architectural solution specific to a given customer or segment [and is] able to articulate this vision across executives and stakeholders and works across broad team of engineers to ensures a systems approach to the integrity of the customer solution which includes multiple technologies across the network and application layers.”

‘Integrated Solutions Development Manager’ (Verizon, Reading). Duties include to: “work with GS Client Partner, Enterprise Architect and Integration Architect to assess opportunity and develop win strategy and optimise solution; Work with GS in determining resource requirements and gaining Executive buy-in; Take ownership for developing solutions to complex customer requirements.”

‘User Experience Architect’ (B&Q, Southampton). Working in the ‘Multi Channel team’, the successful applicant will: “Conduct... user research to assess needs and define user journey, Create requirement documents, sitemaps, process flow diagrams, information architecture and wireframes...”