The whole process took about a week, and I would just like to say that I am 17 and got offered a position so don't be put off if you don't have loads of experience because I certainly don't! I started my application by looking at the M+S careers website to see if any positions were available near me, once I had found a suitable one I was able to begin the lengthy application process. The on-line application consists of 3 main parts; your details, some personality statements where you tell them a bit about yourself by saying how much like you each of the statements is, followed by some animated situations a customer assistant may face each day. It's all quite straightforward but rather time consuming, it takes around 45 minutes to an hour. When all of this has been completed you are told straight away whether you have passed the application. if you have been successful you will be able to book an interview there and then. I did some research into the interview process and found out that there would be 'role play' involved which sounded awful as I had never done anything like it before, so by the time I got to the interview I was very nervous, the interviewer was very sympathetic though and understood it wasn't an easy situation to be in and was very calm and easy to talk too which helped a lot with the nerves. There were two people in the first stage one of which was the interviewer and one who would be sitting there taking notes of the role play. The interviewer explained what was going to happen and what the materials they had given me were. I was then given a little over 5 minutes to read through the information and make some notes (it was more than enough time to be honest) I then arranged the food products spread out a bit so I could take the 'customer' to them, then the second person came back in to make sure I understood everything and then the role play began, mine was about a customer wanting a butter nut squash which was out of stock, so I offered him some substitutions and told him about the range of vegetarian ready meals the company offered. It lasted no more than 5-10 minutes and I was told it went well. I then had to fill out a "what went well/what didn't go well" form while they went to discuss my results. Then they came back in a told me I had passed, we then spent about 25 minutes filling in a load of forms. After which a line manager came in and asked a few basic questions following a sheet she had, this part lasted around 15-20 minutes and then that was it. I received a phone call the next day offering me a position.