My Walt Disney World Preliminary Pre-Screening Interview Process
I filled out the application on www.yummyjobs.com and waited, and waited and finally I received an email inviting me to a pre-screening interview. This seems to be a relatively new way of doing things, as unlike last year YJ is no longer doing phone interviews and is interviewing people in groups instead.
I absolutely hate group interviews, after a terrible experience at Apple as I feel under more pressure and start comparing the way I'm answering things to the way others are answering them and it just messes me up.
Anyway, so the day started off with me getting up at 6AM to get the 7:12 train from Leeds to Manchester, arriving just after 8am. I was going with a Uni friend Joe. I arrived at the station to realise that I hadn't read the email properly - including the big red, bold, underlined text that told us to "BRING A CV AND PHOTO." Panic ensued from my part as you can imagine, the next half an hour consisted of me getting photos taken in a photo-booth, getting a cab back home, printing and editing my CV, getting a cab back to the train station and running for my train. A VERY stressful half an hour. And one that I will not be repeating again. I'd told Joe to go on without me and that I'd meet him at the station on the other end if I made it in time.
I made it to Manchester at about 8.40am, and needed to be at Manchester Met uni for 9.15am so I still had plenty of time. Joe and I got a cab (notice how expensive this day is already getting) to the campus and got there at about 9am. We followed the very confusing signs and eventually made it all the way to the presentation room, to be met with a line of about 100 people in front of us.
Eventually we all shuffled into a lecture theatre and signed ourselves in. Whilst in the queue, I happened to be stood right behind Charlotte, whom I'd met at Disneyland Paris. She'd initially been told she hadn't got through to the interview stage so it was really nice getting to see that they'd reconsidered and offered her a place - and they should, she's worked at Disneyland Paris three times so has more than enough experience!
We made friends with those around us and eventually there was a group of 5 of us together. We sat down in the lecture theatre and were given an hour-long-ish presentation about Walt Disney World and the Disney International College Program. Essentially the presentation was just the information that was on the Yummy jobs website with a few videos thrown in from Disney. We were then put into groups for the interviews. I was in the first group and was going to be interviewed at 11am, just 10 minutes after the presentation had finished.
After the presentation, a girl I knew from uni called Jane was there which was a nice surprise too. During the interview, I managed to get across my attractions work experience at Disneyland Paris and my retail work experience University, but I didn't get a chance to chime in when they asked why we wanted to experience the programme.
I felt the group I was put in had a lot of big personalities, many of whom were not afraid of speaking over or interrupting others. This didn't seem to work well for them as most of the people who acted like that, I later found out didn't get through to the next stage. I guess it shows manners are needed too to work at Disney.
Apparently 1700 people applied and about 500 got to the preliminary stage. They still need to wittle these down to 220.
