I applied online through the H&M website, and 5 days later I got a call. The phone interview was 15-minutes and they asked about why I wanted to work at H&M, how I would describe customer service, what I liked/didn't like about working in customer service/my last job, and about what I knew about H&M as a company. I wasn't prepared for that last question and just said that it was based out of Sweden and had a great clothing recycling program. The interviewer still passed me onto the next stage, but told me I should research more about the company before the next interview. The night before the next interview I spent hours researching and taking notes on H&M as a company, their policies and community involvement etc. I felt very well prepared.
The next interview was the day after the phone interview. It was a group interview, there were about 10 of us. This interview was 2 hours long. It wasn't a very positive environment. The lead interviewer immediately told us that this would be an intense process, but wouldn't compare to the intensity of actually working at H&M, so if at any point we felt it was too much for us we were welcome to leave and they would 'wave goodbye'. We were seated in a row of chairs and took turns standing at the front and introducing ourselves to the group and explaining why we wanted to work at H&M. We then were each given a sheet of paper with one of H&M's values written on it and were given 5 minutes to write about how we have applied that particular value to our lives in the past and how we would use it while working at H&M, which we then each presented to the group. We were then broken into groups of 3 and given a clothing rack and were told we had 5 minutes to take all the clothes off the hangers, fold them perfectly, and put them back on the hangers organized by garment type and colour. They were very particular about the folds and it wound up taking all the groups over 5 minutes. The lead interviewer said she was disappointed in us and that this performance would never fly at H&M. Remaining in the groups, we were then given a sheet of paper with a difficult customer scenario written on it. The groups took turns performing in front of everyone how they would handle the situation, with the lead interviewer pretending to be the difficult customer. Finally, we were called back for an individual chat with an interviewer, where they confirmed our availability. They didn't ask us any personal questions or test our knowledge of the company like I had prepared for, this portion was very quick. Within 3 days I received a brief email saying they would not be hiring me.
I think this interview process was quite intense for a part-time entry level position and am disappointed by the results after putting so much effort in, so rate this as an overall negative experience. I also think the lead interviewer could have been friendlier, it was almost as if she was trying to scare us off.