I applied online. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at NEXT
Interview
When first applying I submitted my CV and cover letter and then completed a series of questions about the company along with a few maths questions that were directly related to the role. The next stage involved a numerical reasoning test and an english based test all of which can be practiced online and appear to follow the same format to all other graduate jobs. After successfully passing this stage I had the video interview, this was really straight forward and involved me answering a few questions about the job role, questions such as "why do you want to be a trainee merchandiser", why I thought I was suited to the role and also a scenario based question. The video interview can be rerecorded as many times as possible so do not worry, there is plenty of time to perfect your answers.
Can be time consuming as the first stage is to submit your CV and cover letter, then you are asked to answer some questions in a video style format, followed by an virtual interview and then an assessment day.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
If you cannot handle quick fire maths questions, this may not be an ideal role for you.
I applied online. I interviewed at NEXT (Leicester, England) in Apr 2026
Interview
The first stage, after submitting your CV and a cover letter, is a simple video interview where you must submit answers (pre-recorded) to 3 questions. The questions were relatively simple and you could re-record your answers if you made any mistakes. The third question was more scenario based where they gave you an example of something that could go wrong and you needed to give options to prevent it happening in the future. The second part of this stage is a maths test with around 10 questions. It isn't timed but they do say they keep track of how long you took for each, and factor that and if they are correct, into your final result.
Very scenario heavy and requires you to know a lot about merchandising in general. Some maths questions also involved, simple maths however. Best of luck to all applying to the role.
