Graduate Assessment Centres

Graduate assessment centres: what are they all about?

Assessment centres are the last part of your recruitment process and by now you can be confident that they think you are pretty good. They are however, pretty tough but we hope that this section will help you.

Assessment Centres can include any of the following elements over either one or two days:

• Interviews
• Ability/Personality tests
• Group exercises
• Problem solving
• Giving presentations
• In-tray exercises
• Social events
• Site visits or office tours

Many of these expensive and time consuming events are held in order to get a true picture of who you are. You will mainly be assessed on the competencies (skills) you demonstrate over the time you are with them and quite often these competencies are outlined in the initial job description that you would have been given. If you don't have these then you are free to call the employer to find out what they may be. They might not want to give them to you but you can always try. Again this shows ingenuity on your part.

Assessment centre interviews:

You should view these as the same as any second stage interview. See the core skills you'll need to demonstrate in the previous chapter.

Ability/Personality test:

These tests are there to explore your verbal and numerical reasoning. Common features include:

• one or two sample questions
• no answer is right or wrong
• they are usually timed with the idea that you won't be able to answer all the questions in the time period
• they usually include questions that ensure that you are answering honestly and consistently
• your answers are used to compile a personality profile
• they usually start off easy and get harder!

There are tests available for you to practise on so go to your careers service and ask them to supply you with some samples.

Assessment centre presentations:

I'm afraid that the same old mantra applies here too. The more you practice, research and read up on the better (and less stressful) your presentation will be. The employer will be looking at you to assess your style and manner of speaking, the confidence you exude, the content and planning of the presentation, how you handle the IT and how you cope with the stress of the event. Being able to give a good presentation is essential in almost all business areas nowadays so make sure you bide by the following rules:

• Say what you are going to say
• Say it
• Say that you have said it

If you combine this with following the instructions you have been given, stick to the time limit (not too short, not too long), answer the question posed of you, speak clearly aiming at the people at the back of the room, keep eye contact and are confident handling the equipment you will be just fine.

As always further information on how to compile a good presentation is available from your careers service.

In-tray exercises

These tests are designed to see how you cope with large volumes of information in as close to a real life situation. Assessors hope to see how you prioritise the information and how refined your decision making skills are. The document you are given could include; a pile of letters, memos and phone messages and some information on the company (eg, contact lists, personnel files, budgets etc)

You should view your in-tray as a two part exercise, the actual dealing with the problem and then the follow up discussions explaining why you made the decisions you did. You should also be prepared for your in-tray exercise to be interrupted by a sudden "emergency" such as having to deal with a staff dispute or accident, so not only are you being asked to deal with, for example a high profile project that has delivery deadlines but you would also be asked to deal with this additional emergency. How you do that would reflect on your ability to prioritise and manage and subsequently how well you do at this exercise.

Group exercises:

By now you're probably feeling rather tired and the old concentration is starting to wane, but have a strong cup of tea and try to focus on the task in hand. As ever, each element of this day/s has been put together for a reason.

Group exercises consist of all or part of the following:

• Group discussions - leaderless and chaired
• Problem solving and case studies
• Team games

Leaderless discussions are designed to assess your ability to negotiate and influence your peers. A popular game here is the balloon debate, where your task is to present a convincing argument as to why you should be saved in an emergency situation. How convincing you are determines how successful you are at this element of the assessment.

Chaired discussions are debates usually lead by everyone in the group in turn. This gives them the chance to demonstrate their leadership abilities and a chance for you to demonstrate your ability to listen and consider what others have said, be sensitive to the group dynamic, include everyone in the debate and do not dominate the debate yourself. As Chair you should also be aware of the time limits and depending on the brief be capable of summarising things at the end of the debate.

Problem solving usually comes in the form of a real life situation where you are asked to work through the problem with a team. Your assessors may not always decide who is to be the leader, so this may be a great opportunity to step up to the task, however be warned others may have the same idea and you don't want to fight over it! If you are the leader you will be expected to plan, motivate, organise and manage the group to get the task done.

The Social event

When assessors plan the assessment day they deliberately include social events to see how you engage with your peers, see what questions you ask managers and recent graduates and to give you a bit of a break (no honestly, they aren't always out to get you). It may seem obvious but whilst you can relax over dinner don't relax too much as this information will usually be fed back to interviewers. Make sure you are courteous to everyone including bar staff and waiters (we'll assume you usually are anyway) and think of this as another chance to look at the current employees to see if you really would fit in - it doesn't have to be just you being interviewed! If there is booze available - don't get wasted.

It's all over

We don't mean that you've failed to get the job, just that the assessment centre is all over. What a relief and very well done. The first thing you should do is make notes of things that went well and things that didn't just incase you have to go through another one. You'd be surprised how easy it is to forget the details. You can also contact the employer and ask them for feedback.

You can usually expect to hear whether you have been successful about one week after the event, however employers may well give you an indication at the actual assessment day.