Ace Your Assessment Centre!

Our Top Tips for Students and Graduates

If you’ve started the process of searching or applying for an internship, placement or graduate job, the chances are you may have already heard about assessment centres, either from your own research or through friends, peers or fellow students and graduates who may have taken part in an assessment centre as part of the recruitment process. There can be an air of mystery and uncertainty around assessment centres if you’ve never been involved in one before but never fear, as the Careers and Employability Service are here to break down everything you need to know about assessment centres and how to make the most of the experience, should you get the chance to take part in one!

So, what actually is an Assessment Centre?

Put simply, assessment centres are just another part of the recruitment process that employers use to test whether candidates fit the criteria needed for the role they are advertising! They typically take place further along a recruitment process, after the initial application form and subsequent stages such as video interviews and psychometric tests, and will usually be either the final stage of recruitment before a job offer, or sometimes a way to select candidates for a final interview. Assessment centres can take place either online or in-person, may range in length from a couple of hours to a full-day experience (or more!) and can involve a variety of individual and group activities, which we’ll discuss in more detail below! The key thing to remember is that assessment centres are just another tool that employers use to determine if you’ll be a good ‘match’ for their company and job role, so revisiting the job description and the company website can be a helpful reminder of what they might be looking to assess!

What happens at an assessment centre?

As mentioned above, assessment centres can feature a variety of individual and group exercises, including:

• Case studies (an assignment/interview, often designed to test your analytical skills)
• Group discussions (designed to test competencies like teamwork and problem solving)
• Group / Individual Interviews
• In-tray exercises (a business scenario designed to assess your ability to organise your workload)
• Presentations (designed to test your communication, creativity and time management abilities)
• Psychometric tests (can test your numeracy skills, logical reasoning, written communication)
• Role play activities (usually involving a scenario that simulates a real workplace situation)
• Social events (an opportunity to network with staff from the company)
• Written tests (which could involve writing an essay, letter, email or report)

The mixture of exercises that an employer chooses to use at an assessment centre can vary, depending on the nature of the work their company does, what skills they are hoping to assess candidates for based on the job description for the role, and whether they are using the assessment centre to identify a single successful candidate for the job or as a way to filter applicants down to a smaller group to take to the next stage of the recruitment process.

Prospects, Target Jobs and Graduates First all contain really helpful information about what sort of activities you might expect to encounter at an assessment centre, and are well worth a read to dig into the detail of what the activities above can involve in practice!

Acing the Assessment Centre: Our Top Tips!

So, you’re feeling a bit more confident about what an assessment centre involves – now you just need to prepare for the real thing! Here are the Careers and Employability Service’s top tips for acing that assessment centre:

• Preparation, Preparation, Preparation – Prepare for an assessment centre as you would for any other part of the recruitment process. Research the company to try and get a better understanding of their values, culture and what they might be looking for in an employee, and don’t forget to revisit the job description for the role you have applied for so you feel confident about what skills, knowledge or behaviours they might be looking to assess with candidates on the day!

• Focus on YOU – It’s natural in group exercises or assessment centres to feel as though you are competing directly with others (different to say, a 1:1 interview, where you might never see the other candidates) but it’s important to remember that in the majority of cases, employers are still assessing candidates individually, even if they are participating in group tasks. For this reason, it’s crucial to only focus on what you can control – participating in activities, volunteering ideas and trying to stay as engaged and focused on the task in front of you as possible.

• There are multiple opportunities to show your value – As assessment centres typically involve a variety of exercises, it’s important to remember not to put too much pressure on any one activity. For example, you may feel that you did not perform that strongly in a particular task (such as a business case study) but you’ll still have the opportunity to show your skills in other exercises, such as a group task, so it’s vital to keep your energy levels up throughout the assessment centre and try to put previous tasks out of your mind until you have completed everything – you are being assessed on your performance throughout the assessment centre, not just on one task!

• Don’t be afraid to be yourself – If you’ve made it to an assessment centre, this means that an employer already considers you a strong candidate for the role you have applied for, so take confidence in this! Employers aren’t simply looking for one type of person and use assessment centres (as they do with other types of recruitment processes) as a way of looking for desirable skills in candidates including teamwork, adaptability, creativity, decision-making, problem-solving and communication. You can demonstrate these skills in different ways – for example, in a group task you don’t have to be a leader to show that you are a great collaborator and communicator, you may choose to demonstrate this through keeping the group on track with the timings for the task or by taking notes, so that everyone has a chance to have their views on the task recorded.

Remember, when it comes to assessment centres the same rules apply as they do to any other aspect of the recruitment process – it’s about doing your research, understanding the job description for the role you are applying for and taking the time to think about how your skills, knowledge and personality can add value to job role/company. By doing this, you won’t necessarily be able to prepare for absolutely everything that could come up in an assessment centre (spoiler: no one can!) but you will be more confident about what criteria the employer is looking to assess and how you might communicate this to them during any activities you have to complete on the day.

It’s also worth remembering that if you feel you may need reasonable adjustments to be made by the employer in order for you to participate effectively in the assessment centre (such as being allocated more time for a written assessment, details about the physical space that will be used for activities), this is something they may ask you about prior to the assessment centre or something you can email them about during the recruitment process.

Good luck, and don’t forget to reach out to us at the Careers and Employability Service if you’d like any support with preparing for an upcoming assessment centre!

Watch the screencast of our How To session on Assessment Centres

Check out our Assessment Centre guide from our Careers and Employability website