Let me guess, you are terribly excited because you have secured an interview. But what’s that you say? It’s a group assessment? You’ve never been to one before?
OK, well, don’t worry.
We’ve got you covered. Here’s what to expect:
What is a group assessment interview?
This means that you will not have the straight forward one to one or panel interview that you’re in and out of in an hour.
Typically, you will be joined by 8-10 other candidates. This can depend on the company and turn out on the day. I have known instances where companies interview between 30 and 50 candidates at an assessment day. Equally, I have also known companies who have invited 10 candidates to a group assessment and ended up with 7 no shows and 3 candidates in attendance. Assessment days can last anywhere between 2 hours and a whole (working) day.
Why a group assessment?
There are a couple of reasons that a prospective employer might prefer a group interview. Firstly, an employer might be looking to see how individuals perform in a work simulated environment. It will not be exact. However, it will allow the employer to assess how candidates perform under pressure, in competitive environments, and in a team.
Secondly, it may be the case that an employer is looking to assess leadership ability.
How are the candidates assessed?
Of course, all of this will depend upon the role for which you are interviewing. Depending upon the role, you might encounter a combination of assessment types within the same assessment day. Perhaps you will be asked to participate in a group ‘survival’ type exercise, followed by making a presentation to a panel and concluded with a one to one interview.
Or perhaps you will be asked to talk about yourself and your achievements to a group, ‘sell’ an object to an interviewer and role play a telephone conversation with another candidate while an assessor observes.
As you have probably gathered by this point, there are numerous combinations.
How can you possibly prepare with so many combinations?
As I mentioned, the type of tasks will depend upon the role you are going for.
With amdas clients, we know which of them ask for group assessments. Typically, it’s Karen’s desk that will have group assessment type interviews. Although, admittedly, I do have 2 who have been known to do group assessments.
As a general rule of thumb, Karen’s clients will invite candidates to group assessments for the following:
Graduate marketing roles
Graduate Conference roles
Graduate sales roles
Therefore, you can be pretty certain with your preparation for Karen’s roles that you will need to look for the keywords such as ‘preparation for graduate style assessment days’ or ‘graduate group interviews’ when looking for resources. Really though, because we meet all of our candidates for any role, Karen will provide you with plenty of preparation guidance.
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