I share my experiences of graduate assessment centres from when I was applying for graduate roles and highlight aspects I feel are essential to pass an assessment centre. I attended four (I know it’s not a lot although, I felt more comfortable reading about peoples experiences when I was in the process). I will cover the type of tasks you can expect to face, how the day will run, how to prepare and more. After reading this, you’ll be ready to pass a graduate assessment centre.
Before we start, as I mentioned above, I attended four assessment centres. I found the first one daunting because I had never experienced one before, but it helped me massively going into future assessment centres. I want to highlight that it may be challenging to hit the ground running in your first assessment centre. If you do, great. If you don’t, the experience will positively influence your performance next time. It is common for your performance to improve as you attend more assessment centres. You will gain more confidence from the experience helping you to pass the assessment centre.
Format of a Graduate Assessment Centre
How is an assessment centre run? Assessment centres last all day, approximately 9 am – 4 pm, exposing you to a wide range of tasks. The location of the assessment centre will depend on the role and company you have applied for. Some companies hire external facilities like hotel meeting rooms etc to hold interviews and other tasks. Additionally, it may be possible that your assessment centre will be at the location you have applied e.g. the companies offices.
For the assessment centres I attended, all the companies covered my travel expenses, including taxis and train tickets. This is very useful as most students don’t have the money to be spending a lot on travelling to and from assessment centres; especially if it’s a long-distance away. One assessment centre (although I am not aware of how many companies do this) paid for the applicants to stay in a hotel the night before the assessment centre. The reason for this was to allow integration with everyone the night before in the hope it will allow everyone to feel more settled for the assessment centre.
What To Expect
The day commences with a company presentation telling you what you can expect from the graduate scheme while giving you more information about the organisation. TIP: If you can pick something out from the company presentation and use it in the interview later, it will impress your interviewer!
Following the company interview, you will be divided into groups, normally 2 or 3 groups. Splitting into groups allows the assessment centre to run more efficiently. For example, group 1 will do the group task first, and group 2 will do the interviews and vice versa in the afternoon.
The rest of the day will feature tasks the company want to assess you against, including breaks in between and lunch. Normally during lunch, all the applicants and employees of the company who are assessing you will interact. Mixing with the assessors is a great chance to introduce yourself and ask questions. Asking questions gives a great impression to the assessors (even if it’s only at lunch), but it also helps you understand if the role is for you, which is the most important thing.
How you conduct yourself outside of tasks and activities is just as important as your conduct inside of them. Although the assessors aren’t officially assessing you, your behaviour will be monitored sub-concisely. They will be looking at how you interact with everyone, are you comfortable in a group of people you don’t know etc.
If you have got to an assessment centre, you have enough technical ability and knowledge for the role. It’s all about how you will integrate within the company and if you have the relevant soft skills (e.g. communication skills, people skills).
Graduate Assessment Centre Tasks and How to Pass Them
Interviews
Interviews are a guarantee when it comes to assessment centres. Interviews are a crucial part of the recruitment process, so make sure you come prepared. Performing well in your interview is central to help you pass an assessment centre.
The interviewer will have a copy of your CV and potentially any other information you’ve provided during the application process e.g. answers to questions at the initial stages. Hence, it is crucial to review this before the assessment centre. An additional benefit is, it will allow you to access examples of competencies more readily during the interview. I found it particularly useful to take a folder with me into the interview, with my CV, work examples, certificates etc, inside and give it to the interviewer to look through during the interview.
The interview questions will predominantly be competency-based. For example, “Give me an example of a challenge you faced in the workplace and tell me how you overcame it”. The purpose of these questions is to understand how you’ve used certain skills and try to predict your future performance.
I have covered a good structure for answers to competency-based questions here. My best bit of advice is to always finish the answer by highlighting what you learnt from the experience, how you would approach it differently/better next time and how this will help you in the role. If you can finish off the competency-based questions off with the points, you’ll be doing very well in the interview.
Presentation
Another central part of assessment centres is presentations. The circumstances of how you prepare these can be different depending on the company. We will discuss the two methods I encountered. The first method was being notified before the assessment centre that I will be giving a presentation on a topic you have studied at university. This method allows you to prepare and practise before arriving at the assessment centre, which helps you refine the presentation. Luckily, the nature of the university requires you to give presentations, so there is a good chance you may have a presentation already prepared.
The other method was, being given a brief/information pack to digest for 30-45 minutes and prepare a 10-minute presentation. The subject will generally be a non-related topic (the topic I faced was a European logistic company). I found this presentation challenging and thought I did not perform well (I got offered the graduate role so, I must have done okay). The title of the presentation or brief is usually a question requiring analysis of information.
The essential part of this task is how you answer the questions after the presentation. The assessor will probe the information you provided and ask why you made the decision you did. When giving your answer, it is essential to show how you arrived at your decision, expressing your thought process (this is an essential skill they are looking at, alongside your presentation skills). If a question reminds you of a piece of information you forgot to include in your presentation, remain calm and use it to help support your answer.
A lot of the process is evaluating how you deal with different situations and scenarios. My best bit of advice if you face this type of presentation is to remain calm during the questions and explain your decision-making process, highlighting the key bits of information that influenced your decision.
Group Tasks
The group task you will undertake will probably be something unusual or a task you have not participated in beforehand. It is essential to remember the assessor is not looking at the team’s performance in this task but your involvement and how you are interacting in a team. Your team may perform very well although, if you do not work well in the team, the assessors will not be impressed.
In tasks like these, it is vitally important to discuss your thoughts and ensure everyone voices their opinion. If there is a quiet member in the team, use this to your advantage. Ask them what their opinion is or what they are thinking, try to get them to interact. Achieving this in the group task will make the assessor notice and will ‘score you points’.
Sometimes the task will be physical, e.g. building something as a team, or it may be desk orientated, e.g. debating a statement or preparing a presentation. No matter what task you faced with, the points I have discussed above are all applicable.
Group presentations are a popular type of group task as they can see a range of your skills and aspects of your personality in a short space of time. It will test your team working skills, communication, presenting etc. When it comes to the presentation, you must remember you are being watched all the time. The assessor will be looking at how your standing, are you paying attention to your team while they are presenting? Are your arms crossed? Are you fidgeting? How you act when not the focus during the task is important because you are always the focus for your assessor.
Normally, for each member of your team, there will be an individual assessor for every member. Sometimes you will be told who is assessing who, but you are not normally made aware. For example, if there are six people in your group, there will be six assessors watching the team assessing individual performances.
A great mindset to have in group tasks is a point scoring system. There are certain qualities the company are looking for, and every time you can show them is brilliant in their eyes. Having in your mind to accumulate points will help how you approach the group task.
However, you must ensure that it is done correctly and professionally. Speaking out of turn and interrupting to include overs will not aid your chances. Although you have the right intention, you were so focused on ‘scoring points’ you showed unwanted characteristics.
It is a great system to have in your mind, but use it appropriately. I have created a little ‘scoring table’ below to help highlight behaviours the assessors will be looking for. If ‘you score lots of points’ you have taken a big step to pass the assessment centre.
| Behaviour | Explanation | Points |
| Time Keeping | This shows good timekeeping skills and willingness to take on responsibility. A good way to time keep to use your phone or watch to track the time while writing the finishing time on the paper in front of you (so you don’t forget). Notifying the team before finishing, e.g 2 minutes left announcement, will show you have maintained focus on the task and allowing the team time to wrap up the activity and produce some results. | 1 |
| Asking others their opinion | As discussed above, involving everyone in the group is a fantastic trait to show because it shows you value everyone’s opinion. That is a great trait for a team player. This will score you points for demonstrating collaborative team working skills. It may be difficult to perform the actual task but try to be creative. If there are no ‘quiet’ individuals, when you move onto another topic or next aspect, ask someone their thoughts. It isn’t all about interacting with ‘quiet’ individuals, it’s about interacting in a group (no matter who is in the group). | 2 |
| Diplomatic | Listening to other peoples points of view but also expressing your own, even if you disagree, in a positive manner. Express you understand the pro’s and con’s of their opinion to show you understand their viewpoint. The worst thing you can do if someone expresses an idea or opinion you disagree with is criticising. This is a big no-no for the assessor! | 2 |
| Contribute | If you do not contribute, then the assessors will have nothing to assess! Contributing can be a fine line between the perfect amount and being overpowering. However, if you are implementing the points above, it will be difficult to be overpowering. Also, when you are contributing, speak with confidence. Even if you are confused, express that confidence so you can understand. It better to say something and understand than sit there in silence and the group task bypassing you. | 1 |
How To Prepare To Pass A Graduate Assessment Centre
You want to pass an assessment centre, so how do you prepare? Generally, you are notified at least a month before an assessment centre, so you have plenty of time to prepare. The best thing to do in preparation is to research online. There are sites like Glassdoor where students and graduates share their experiences from the assessment centre.
There is a chance that someone who has previously been to the assessment centre you’re attending has shared their experience. This could include the group task, interview questions etc. If you can find this information online, it will allow you to prepare for a certain task/question in the interview, which is brilliant.
On the other hand, companies may change the structure of the assessment centre and the tasks they provide, so it is important to do additional preparation on top of what you have found online. From experience, I can say that what is found on Glassdoor is normally accurate and extremely helpful.
Reviewing your application is a great way to prepare for an assessment centre because it allows you to review the information you have already provided to the company e.g. questions to answers, CV etc. The assessors will have a copy of your application and will most likely refer to it in the interview. Additionally, it gives you an idea of what has worked well so far, how you structured your answers, the examples you provided etc.
A task I found useful was analysing my CV. Go through your work experience and annotate the roles with the different skills you used and developed. From this task, you will have a list of competencies that you have used in previous roles, and you can start writing answers from them.
A great way to prepare is to practise! The best way to practise is by contacting your careers team and seeing if they hold any assessment centres to give you exposure. I did this at university, and I found it very helpful. It made me aware of all the different aspects you are assessed on. Additionally, as students from alternative subjects will be attending the tasks you encounter will require fundamental soft skills.
As well as assessment centres, they will hold practise interviews. Before the interview, they will ask you to highlight skills/areas to base questions, e.g. Tell me a time you used good team working skills. This helps you prepare an answer, but you will get feedback on that answer and how to improve it. Towards the end of the interview, they will ask you questions that you are not expecting, which will help replicate a real interview scenario. Testing your interview skills in this scenario is a great way to understand how you will react in an interview.
As mentioned above, obtaining feedback is one of the most important ways to improve and understand how you are performing. Receiving feedback from others gives you a great perspective because you may have thought you gave a perfect interview answer. However, when answering, it comes across differently from how you expected. The advice doesn’t have to be from skilled professionals, any feedback is better than no feedback!
Summary
Assessment centres are the final stage of the recruitment process, so you want to perform the best you can to help land that graduate role! You will face a range of tasks, expected and unexpected, which will test a range of your skills. The two best things you can do to help yourself is research and practise. Research the company and try to understand their assessment centres from others feedback and experiences. Practise as much as you can so you can be comfortable in the environment of interviews. Get in contact with your careers service (if you’re at university) because they provide great resources and tools to help you pass an assessment centre.
If you are reading this because you have an assessment centre soon, good luck an let me know how you get on!
- Related Posts:
- How To Get Onto An Engineering Graduate Scheme Part 1
- How To Get Onto An Engineering Graduate Scheme Part 2
- How To Master A Graduate Interview
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