My Interview At LUSH Cosmetics

In case you've been living under a rock for the last few years, you'll know that LUSH is my absolute favourite brand in the entire world. I solely use LUSH products on my hair and in the bath / shower, and I'm also very passionate about their skincare and general goodies too.

Clearly, working for LUSH is my dream job and I'm prepared to do almost anything for the chance to work there... including waking up at 6am *shock horror* but I'll get to that later!

Applying for the role

So for weeks now I have been stalking the social media accounts of my local LUSH stores, waiting for the "We're Hiring!" posts to start flooding my feed, as it's always around this time every year that LUSH starts scouting for temporary Christmas staff.

It didn't take long before I spotted an advert for LUSH Meadowhall advertising for 8, 12 and 16 hour contracts. I absolutely adore the Meadowhall store, and I have made friends with so many sales assistants there that I even have them on Instagram! As I work full-time Monday to Friday, I thought the 8 hour contract would be perfect for me to slot in on weekends, so I wrote up my cover letter and fired my CV off straight away.

I heard back almost immediately after the application deadline, thanking me for my passionate application and inviting me to attend a group interview the next week at 8am.

8am. As in, 8 in the morning. I'd previously read that most interviews took places after the store had closed, however since Meadowhall doesn't close until 9pm, the morning was the best time to get us all together before the store opened to the public.

This was all fine and I happily replied saying I would love to attend, until I realised that not only is Meadowhall 40 minutes away from where I live, I would also have to factor in traffic and time to get ready, meaning I would have to get up at 6am on the day. Gulp. As someone who is used to rolling out of bed at 8:30, this was going to be a struggle, however I can pleasantly report that I sprang out of bed when the day came, as I was just so excited!

The group interview

When I arrived for the interview, there was five other girls and one lad waiting outside the store, making seven of us in total. I had actually expected there to be loads more applicants, but I was glad to have a cosy group and set about chatting and learning everyone's names (Lauren, Ellie, Emma, Sam... I tried!) but we were also given name stickers to clear up any awkwardness.

We'd been told to wear whatever we were comfortable in, and it was so cool to see everyone's individual fashion senses. Emma especially was wearing an incredible pair of floral print trousers, whilst I wore my pink My Little Pony jumper under a black pinafore.

Once inside the store (the worst part was waiting anxiously outside) I felt completely at ease, and Laura the trainee manager was so fun and bubbly. The only bit of admin we had to do was sign in and show our right-to-work documents - I took my passport - then all the fun began! And it really was fun, I didn't ever want to leave.

Icebreaker task

We'd been asked to bring an object that represented us to the interview, then during the icebreaker task we had to talk about it and describe ourselves to the group. I chose one of my favourite My Little Pony toys, as it was sweet and colourful and made everyone happy, which is exactly how I feel when I'm in LUSH.

There was a wide variety of objects that people brought including a lip-liner (her love of beauty) a stage award (her passion for acting) and a DC wallet (how he wanted to be as inspiring as superheroes.)

First activity - Finding the perfect gift

We were then split into two groups and given the challenge to find the perfect gift for a specific customer. The customer we had was someone looking to buy a Christmas gift for a family member who suffers from eczema. We then had to come up with 3 questions that we wanted to ask our customer.

I'm not ashamed to say that I totally took over as the leader of our group, as my product knowledge and insight into LUSH were seemingly unrivalled *grin*. The questions we decided to ask were as follows;

1. Are you looking for something as a treat (that also won't irritate you), or for something to directly soothe eczema?
2. Is the eczema all over, or in specific places?
3. Are there any ingredients that you can't have, or just don't like?

We learned that she wanted a treat, but soothing properties would be amazing, that the eczema was on her arms and legs, and that she didn't like anything citrus scented.

Straight away I knew that the Relax gift set was absolutely perfect for our customer as it contains soothing lavender products such as A French Kiss bubble bar, along with really gentle items such as Butterball bath bomb and Dream Cream body lotion, which recently went viral for curing a toddler's eczema. It also contains Twilight shower gel, which is the perfect seasonal product to give the gift a Christmas feel to it.

Second activity - Becoming BFFs

We then had to partner up and basically just chat and become besties, then report back a fact about them to the group. I was partnered with Emma, who had just finished her A Levels and loved acting, having performed in Les Mis, Guys & Dolls, and Sister Act.

She was also really into Gossip Girl as well (I am currently obsessed with it) so we genuinely got on really well and found the whole activity a breeze.

It was really amazing hearing everyone else's facts as well. Sam was going to be in a drag production, Lauren has a tiny jack russel dog, and Ellie wanted to open her own interior design business.

Final activity - Playing pretend

I think this was my absolute favourite activity of them all, just because it felt really natural to me. We split up into two groups again, and were either customers or sales assistants. We had to browse the store and the sale assistants would chat and demo products as they would IRL.

I absolutely loved pretending to be a staff member! Sam was looking at the perfumes, so I asked if he'd tried the body sprays as they were more convenient and came in recycled packaging. I demonstrated spraying Dirty body spray, then spoke to him all about the toothy tabs, lip scrubs and lip balms too.

We got onto the topic of the Oxford Street store as Sam used to live in London and frequented it a LOT (!!!) We were happily chatting away when we ran out of time for the activity, and I was gutted when I realised it was all over, as I'd been enjoying myself so much.

I genuinely felt like I'd been waiting for the difficult part to begin, I'd been having so much fun just being myself and playing with products, it all felt really natural and I just knew I'd done well.

The Trial Shift

Barely a few hours after the group interview, I received an email from LUSH saying how pleased they were with me and how well I knew about the products, ingredients and ethics. I was invited to pick from a choice of dates and times for a trial shift, and by this time I was nearly screaming with excitement! They had some feedback for me too, saying they would like to see more teamwork (eg. I was a bit naughty for taking charge, but nobody else was saying anything!) but other than that they were really impressed.

I chose my trial shift to be Sunday at 12pm, which I thought would be the busiest of all the times listed. I'd learned from my interview at Benefit that I wouldn't get anywhere with demonstrating customer service if there was no customers around!

Then honestly... I can't remember anything at all. I went into a kind of LUSH trance, and just focused on talking to everyone, playing with the products and really just enjoying myself. I know that's not very helpful, but I think I was just so anxious and excited that I blocked it out and just went into the little LUSH-land inside my head (how adorable is that though.)

I vaguely remember playing with a Think Pink bath bomb in the sink alongside a little girl, and accidentally dying her hands pink, but I'll brush over that...

The next few days I was so busy looking after my sister that I didn't even remember to check my email, so I was totally shocked when I refreshed it to see an email from LUSH with the subject line "Offer of Christmas position". It truly was a fist pump moment and I screamed in excitement.

I'd done it! 

My next stage now is to attend my induction day in September, then figure out just exactly how I'm going to manage working at LUSH, whilst also working full time and trying to blog more often...

Wish me luck!