Assessment centre tips?

Hey everyone,

My job search may well be coming to an end. I’ve come down to that there London for an assessment centre with IBM.

I’m going to be myself and hopefully apply what common sense I have. However, does anyone have any tips on glorious ways of guaranteed success when partaking in all the group tasks? 😀

PS If you’re somehow going to be there I’ll be the one with the limp!

Thanks!

1) Read the brief. They may be looking for someone to lead the group, to get a result , to achieve consensus. The brief will tell you.

2) it’s rare that trying to dominate the group discussions will win brownie points. Listen to others and try to build on what they say.

3) others may have been given a different brief to you.

Mikewsmith will be along with some excellent advice in a minute.

If it’s overnight don’t be last to bed.

Thanks igm! I’m a slow reader so I’ll make sure I try and pick up on the essentials.

Sadly its not an overnighter mikewsmith! But thanks though, will remember that should I go on any

Probably best, seen a couple in hotels we used for work and it does prove that students are well out of their depth at the bar with seasoned expenses card holders.

Curious about which way that went, either the students embarrassed themselves? Or the expenses card holders drank them away with the might of the company card?

The lads with the cards will be standing much longer, it doesn’t matter if they look like dicks. It really matters if you do.

assessment centre with IBM.

Probably different now, but I had one in the past in my student days (and did what no-one did – turned down a job offer from IBM 😉 ) Many moons ago so will give an overview as I’d expect it to be different. I may be muddling the details with other assessment days I’ve done though, but it might give some idea.

Mine was a day long, tech interview, personal interview, 2x group exercise, literacy test, numeracy test, and I’m sure the buffet at lunch was a test. Messiest finger food possible (ribs anyone?) with tiny paper plates and no napkins. 😉

Tech interview – interviewer noted on my CV straight off the bat that i rode bikes, he’d just started MTBing…spent the whole interview chatting about places to ride, got to time and he said “oops, we were supposed to chat about tech stuff”. I just said it was ok, I’m really good at that stuff.

Personal interview, I ended up talking about the reasons I wouldn’t want to work for IBM, all the boring “business nonsense” stuff. Got lucky in that interviewer didn’t like it either, and was involved in some interesting research stuff.

I’d never advise anyone took my interview advice tho, i’m honest to a fault, I’m not about to BS just to get a job.

Group exercises were a scenario with role play about being down a hole and who would you save. Bit odd. Another one building lego towers which was ace, points awarded based on tallest tower, shortest time, least bricks. I had our team build with the bricks on their sides – twice the height for the same no. of bricks and I just whipped them into doing my plan as I was sure it was a winner….

Don’t remember the literacy exam, the numeracy one really freaked out a lot of people cos they didn’t finish it. I didn’t either but didn’t care – I expected it to be impossible to finish – if it’s a test you can ace then you can’t distinguish people’s ability, I just trusted in the fact I knew I was good at that stuff and so it should show…

mikewsmith – Member

The lads with the cards will be standing much longer, it doesn’t matter if they look like dicks. It really matters if you do.

Yes, let them wait if they pay by card for a pint.

I got my first job via one with Nortel 20+ years ago. Turned out the whole thing was just an HR led formality and the department sponsoring your application had the only say in whether you got the job and they just had a one hour ‘slot’ for the technical bit. Everything else was just a side show….

:O footflaps! I’ve never thought about it that way, bit weird to think of it that was though as seems a bit of a waste of time for them, what with all the “time is money” lark.

Thanks IA, can only hope that this might happen! They don’t have my CV so no chance of me mentioning I ride bikes unless I get to mention it. The format sounds rather comparable to that which they’ve emailed me. Thanks again

HR departments like to dream up stuff to justify their existence 😉

Grrr. Obviously in the wrong field then

They don’t have my CV

They barely had my CV – they’d received it in word format (I preferred PDF but hey ho I did as I was told) but opened it with lotus notes or somesuch which had totally mangled the formatting etc. All the words were there, just in a pretty random order. As I was at uni at the time, it had term and holiday addresses on it, my invite was sent to an address seemingly made of words plucked at random from both, surprised it even got to me!

As above you may find the assessment stuff is ignored. I (later) did another interview with a (nameless) place where after the interview with the folk I’d be working with got told I had the job, but would I mind going to HR and doing all their tests and exercises with them, as they did so like to feel useful. I was assured that it would have no bearing on the offer however… I did notice the HR fella was particularly keen.

Just occurred to me you might want to know why I turned down IBM.

Basically I knew they did some interesting work (why I even went along) and also some boring stuff (hence my personal interview topic). But they couldn’t/wouldn’t tell me what exactly I’d be working on before I accepted the offer.

footflaps – Member
Turned out the whole thing was just an HR led formality and the department sponsoring your application had the only say in whether you got the job and they just had a one hour ‘slot’ for the technical bit. Everything else was just a side show….

😆 True! True! Absolutely. It is the side show. I was an HR manager for an IT company in the far east long long time ago and my IT colleagues would refer to me as the evil HR person (Dilbert was our hero then).

Put it this way, as evil HR person I would narrow down the candidates by matching the key words in their CV to the specs given to me by the technical manager. Then briefly interviewed them to make sure they have no weird behaviour but the final decision was always the technical manager. I was just there to pretend I knew something about technical stuff … I knew jack about programming.

footflaps – Member

HR departments like to dream up stuff to justify their existence

Yes, I like that a lot like let’s do some team building exercises by going to pubs or night clubs after work. I usually got good feedback on this but when it comes to office hour “training” I would get long faces and silence throughout. 😆

Oh ya … I was planning assessment centre for candidates too but that was far more advance and evil for people in the far east. They thought I had gone nuts with all the evil HR power. They thought I was going to control their subordinates so put me in my place as HR person with insignificant power.

Thanks for your responses everyone. chewkw & IA I dont know how to feel about it now! I think I somewhat feel better about it as from what I’ve gathered, somewhere in IBM someone technical is interested in me and my skills.

IA – I totally get what you mean, I don’t think they will even tell me where I would be working if they were to offer me a place. I’ve had an interview with a (nameless) company and they’ve told me where I’d be based and what I’d be doing should I get an offer.

I’ve had an interview with a (nameless) company and they’ve told me where I’d be based and what I’d be doing should I get an offer.

That was the situation I ended up in (competing with the IBM offer). I then told the other company that the job they’d offered me sounded boring but they did some far more interesting work in a different department and could I get a job there please. And they said yes, so that’s where I ended up.

Don’t worry about it in general. Accept the fact you’ll be tested, there’ll be questions you can’t answer and maybe tests you can’t finish. That’s the point though, they want to sort wheat from chaff, it doesn’t mean you failed.

Ahhhh well. I didn’t get it

ryderredman – Member

Ahhhh well. I didn’t get it

Sorry to hear you did not get it. Nevermind.

Now, you can take your revenge by asking for feedback from the HR to see where you failed?

Do you know where you failed?

Don’t worry keep searching as there are plenty of jobs out there if you are willing to work. Some may not be to your liking but just go for it. There is no such thing as perfect jobs. Just job that is stressful or less stressful.

My records for applying for job was 106 applications with 2 interviews many many years ago.

My biggest regret was missing out with working for a Norwegian oil company … I would be drinking black gold. 😆

I would be drinking black gold.

Different strokes for different folks I suppose! Haha

We only did group exercises, there were no interviews so there was definitely something about me which they didn’t take a fancy to. They ended up axing each member of our 5 person team, so I’d imagine there was something we did during the group session that didn’t portray their core values.

If it’s an assessment centre for just a dull old tech bod who will be coding in a darkened room because they have the leadership style of Genghis Khan then an assessment centre is truly just a side show.

Of course, if you want to find out whether a person can you know, actually interface with another human being, lead and manage people and large complex projects and clients then these things can be sort of useful and whomever it is that makes the final hiring decision, they will be looking at the data generated.

The data can be pretty valuable on cost versus ROI basis as well. You only have to move your distribution curve .25SD to the right when measuring performance against hiring decision to usually yield an ROI of several hundred percent. But then I guess you tech bods don’t really get statistical analysis when it’s applied to something like human capital.

ryderredman – Member

We only did group exercises, there were no interviews so there was definitely something about me which they didn’t take a fancy to. They ended up axing each member of our 5 person team, so I’d imagine there was something we did during the group session that didn’t portray their core values.

Crikey. I did not know HR is getting so evil nowadays with their ability to “read minds” just by observing group exercise! 😯 I must learn that technique.

Ask them for the reasons then see how they positively rephrase their answer/explanation to you. Then reverse their positive comments into a negative ones in order to see the true meaning behind them. Take that as learning experience so that you can to prepare next time if you encounter another evil HR scheme.

But then I guess you tech bods don’t really get statistical analysis when it’s applied to something like human capital.

My head processed it like a UDP packet received out of sync if that helps?

Chewkw – I can’t decide whether you are or are not anything to do with HR! If you are and they give me feedback would you mind if I sent you it if I can’t decode the secret meaning behind it?

ryderredman – Member

Chewkw – I can’t decide whether you are or are not anything to do with HR! If you are and they give me feedback would you mind if I sent you it if I can’t decode the secret meaning behind it?

I was working as HR manager for an IT company many years ago (not now) so things might have changed a lot since then, and I may not be able to decode them totally or accurately. Best thing to do is ask them to decode them but probably they will come up with another coded response.

There are many reasons one get rejected and some we may never know but can only guess. That is the nature of selection and recruitment.

Why not pose some of the responses/explanations here on STW but not the entire letter (just make sure you are on the right side of law) to see how many variation of understanding we have.

🙂

I’d like to think it hasn’t! But then again. Yeh I most probably will post it on here. Just a bit shocked and feel like a bit of a pleb I didn’t make it past the group exercises.

Thanks for the words of wisdom so far

ryderredman – Member
Just a bit shocked and feel like a bit of a pleb I didn’t make it past the group exercises.

Try to see it as a positive experience or as part of the learning curve.

Applying for a job is like probability game, the more you apply the greater the chances of success.

🙂

My analogy is far messier than that. Yours is far more suitable

There are many reasons one get rejected and some we may never know but can only guess. That is the nature of selection and recruitment.

They’re also not always negative, we’ve had people who were just way too good for a role and decided to turn them down as we didn’t think they’d stick it (get bored).