WDW ICP Summer 2013 - Face to Face interview
The interview was held at The Walt Disney Company's headquarters in Hammersmith, London which I was super-excited about seeing. I arrived in Hammersmith at 8:20 and met my friend Joe from uni who was also interviewing, we went for a hot chocolate/breakfast at Costa coffee and then at about 8:45 we rocked up at the front doors of the offices...only to be told we had to walk all the way round to the back of the offices. To those who need to do this (you most likely will) from the front of the offices, turn right and go into the shopping mall, walk down and then turn right and go past Costa keep walking to the escalators in front of you, turn left and walk to McDonalds and just before McD's take a right through the doors, walk all the way up this ramp to the bus station. Turn right and it's the building that has a Mickey on it inside...and lots of young people in suits.
Once inside, we had to go to the desk and get security passes. They had a bit of trouble finding my name but we got there eventually. Then we stood around for a good while and were finally called up by Yummy Jobs. Up we went through the security barriers and up the stairs. Upstairs we were greeted with framed pictures of Walt Disney, photos of the office building and posters of famous films. We queued up and handed in the documents which Yummy Jobs had requested in their confirmation email, confirming our place at these interviews.
We then walked into an auditorium while there was a video playing about the college program. The staff in the auditorium were the American Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Cast Members and were all very polite and friendly. They showed us a presentation and lots of videos (not too much repetition with Yummy Jobs, but a lot of it was unnecessary) for about an hour which included all the ins and out and just made me even more excited!!
The presentation started at about 9:30 and finished at about 10:40. Then Yummy Jobs took over and read the list of names and interview times...Joe had his at 11am-12pm slot and I ended up having mine scheduled for 4pm-5pm.
So I had to kill over 5 hours...this did mean that I got to meet some nice people that had interviews at 3pm and 4pm - we all went over to Subway and had lunch as we were starving by this time. Then we took the tube to Westfield which was exciting as I'd never been there before...it can only be SO exciting though. There's not an incredible amount you can do in a shopping centre apart from shop...so we people-watched for about three and a half hours and went into a few clothes shops and the Apple Store too. There's only so much you can talk about though with people you've just met in a shopping centre, but it was nice. We saw a couple of celebs whilst waiting which helped pass the time - Dappy from N'Dubz and Nicola Adams, the Gold-medalist Boxer.
We made our way back to the offices for 3PM for one of the guy's interviews and then we waited around downstairs for about an hour for our 4PM slot. Security was very tight so we had to wait downstairs until then, and definitely couldn’t walk around exploring the building which is understandable. At 4.20PM we went up and found that about 4 people from the previous group had yet to be interviewed. The individuals interviews were not conducted in a big room with tables and interviewers on each corner as I had imagined, but rather with screens separating candidates and the waiting participants.
The order of being called in for interview was random... I was the third to last to be interviewed at about 5:15PM.
My interviewer was Sue who was very friendly, nice and polite but she seemed to be tired as anyone would be after conducting so many interview. Despite that, I think I still presented myself positively and it went as well as it could have gone. She did call me Gio though which was nice instead of my full name, as requested on my name tag.
The interview was less than 10 minutes long and focused quite a lot on why I wanted to do certain roles, and my experience at Disneyland Paris. There were no questions on "How I'd deal with the florida heat" or anything like that which I'd heard they might ask. And one particularly tough question was "What did you find the most challenging about working at Disneyland Paris?" which I gave an absolutely rubbish answer to, as I didn't find anything particularly difficult. She also asked how I'd heard about the college program.
They said we'd know by November 9th which was an eternity away...
I found out on November 2nd that yes! I will be going to Orlando, Florida to work at Walt Disney World!!
What happened next? Read my December update.
NEW: Want a peek behind the scenes working for Disney? Download my book about 16 months spent living and working at Disneyland Paris now on Amazon.
