Interview process
After the initial phone interview, it was a full day assesment comprising of one to one interview, presentation to senior management and group and psychometric testing.
I found the group exercises to be tedius and uninteresting lasting between half an hour to an hour, each person takes it upon thereself to act as `the leader` which means that theres shouting and a short power struggle, rude people generally do better in these exercises in my experiance. The smaller the groups, the more effective the group exercises are, anything over 3/4 people in a group will render the exercise pointless for a number of people who have no interest in shouting, arguing and generally being rude in an interview process.
One to one was very good, this lasted 20 minutes and was a good chance to show your personality and explain why you want the job along with what you want from it, along with giving you the chance to ask valid questions about what the employee wants from you in the next year and beyond.
The presentation was a solid backup to the one to one interview, lasting 5 minutes before being asked questions on it requring quick thinking and confidnent speaking. It was a good way to show confidence, something that the group exercises aim to do, but fail due to the struggle to speak and to be seen as a good commmunicator.
Most difficult question
What do you want from this job, what are your goals.
I said my goals were to make money, but this was a poor motviation to have as eventually money would not be enough and my work motivation would drop with it.
Interview tips
Do your research, you can stand out and blow away your competition by asking questions about specific things that the other graduates had not found or research instantly putting yourself ahead of them in the interview process.
If you sit at a table, sit where you are the main focus, at the front or head of the table are the key places where people will see your face and recognise you when you speak.
Be confident and genuine, dont try to sound too smart or you can make yourself look an idiot. Be down to earth and speak to the interviewer how they are speaking to you. Adapt to each persons interview technique, if they speak fast and get to the point, then follow suit, dont mumble on. If they like having a conversation and chat then follow suit and open up.
Find out who are the senior members and decision makers as soon as you can and focus your attention on catching there eye and approval, things can be a lot easier making friends with people high up.
Experiences at the assessment centre
There was 8 of us and we were split into 2/3/4s quite often which was good as smaller groups give each member the chance to shine and have a degree of input. We had a limited amount of time to talk about the group project before being required to answer the questions in a individual testing environement. The task was quite hard and it added to the tention of doing it, I didnt think it was a great task to set due to the degree of difficulty that it was set at.