Applied online - easy enough. Was then contacted for a telephone interview shortly after and passed this with basic competency questions. Was then invited to a face-to-face interview in the Hamilton center in Glasgow.
Okay, so, the face-to-face interview. You are to sit in a room with the interviewer and tell a bit about yourself and explain your work history. Was explained that this is the only part of the interview which is not assessed. Easy enough, then you dive right into the role playing exercise. You are left with information and the interviewer will call you from another room after ten minutes in which you can prepare and write notes. I believed the role play was easy enough - the interviewer pretends to be a customer that has lost their debit card and requires a new one. After seeing the customers statement, she has recently booked a holiday. You should try and sell travel insurance. The 'customer' then asks if there are any methods in which she can access her account over the phone without having to go through security time and time again. After checking a few more things, you end the call.
Now, in comparison to other role plays i have done in the past, this one i THOUGHT went rather well. I felt positive, because i WAS nervous, and you could obviously tell with my voice. However, this is expected with an interview and someone that has never worked with a bank. They tell you that you do not need bank experience or experience within a call centre but this is not true. I was told after a few minutes she felt as though i was just "reading from a script", which i was supposed to do? She said the rest of it was great, i sounded professional and built a rapport with the customer. I've never left an interview in my life before feeling like their decision to hire me or not was unjust, but today i did. The mistakes that were picked up in the call were tiny things that could be improved with training, such as sounding a bit nervous. I would understand if i did not conduct the role-play professionally or i missed out major details, but this was not the case. Was told to leave and that i could not carry on to the next stage of the interview, which was the competency based questions.
I imagine interviewees are sent out feeling deflated on a daily basis and HSBC as an organisation are missing out on really hard working and capable people as their interview standards are too high.
