Holland & Barrett Interview Questions
& Process

I recently interviewed with this company and wanted to share my experience. The first round, the recruiter was about 30 minutes late. While that wasn’t ideal, I understand delays happen so I didn’t consider it a major issue. I progressed to the second round, which I genuinely enjoyed. The conversation was engaging and the team spoke a lot about their commitment to providing a great candidate experience. However, after completing two rounds of interviews, I received a standard, generic rejection response. Given the emphasis on candidate experience throughout the process, this felt disappointing. After investing time in multiple interviews, more personalized feedback would have aligned better with the values they described. Overall, while parts of the experience were positive, the follow-up communication did not reflect the candidate-centric approach that was highlighted during the interviews.

I applied for a senior front-end developer role at Holland & Barrett and initially had a positive experience. I was asked to complete a Coderbyte technical assessment, which took around 2 hours, and I passed all the tests. After that, I had an HR screening, which also went well. Around two weeks later, I was told that the team wanted to speak with me and that the next interview would be arranged. Unfortunately, after this point, communication completely stopped. I followed up multiple times via email regarding interview availability, but I never received a response. I understand that hiring priorities can change, but a simple update or rejection would have been appreciated—especially after the time invested in a lengthy technical assessment and multiple interview steps.

The interview process was incredibly long and disorganized. I showed up at their office, unsure who to ask for, and couldn't connect with anyone from HR. I also had a call with a team member who was in a coffee shop, misread my CV, and hadn't received my presentation from the prior stage. It turned out the department had been shut down, making it a ghost role where they were just fishing for information. I no longer shop at Holland and Barrett and wouldn't recommend applying. The role was reposted multiple times, and a recruiter who approached me about it was surprised by the feedback. It seems like a company run by incompetent people who don't know how to do their jobs. The stress of six rounds and being unemployed caused me to break down, which is quite ironic given their product focuses on employee health and wellbeing.

It was a pretty fast interview for a retail job, and they asked the kind of questions you'd normally expect for these kinds of positions. They also asked me to make photocopies of some papers, so you should be ready to do that and show the original documents too.