Hi
@FCL25 just before
@Ram Sabaratnam gets back to you:
Paired exercise and group exercise:
I have never done a paired exercise in an AC, but my best guess is that it will involve working together with another AC participant on a set of common tasks. You will probably be expected to show teamwork and organizational skills. Thus, you should try to constantly ask your partner for their input and not appear as antagonistic or competitive by making your ideas always trump theirs. At the same time, however, you should try to ensure you are thinking critically and expressing your thoughts on each point of discussion. Finally, since you will likely be working under time pressure, it would be good to introduce some structure early on and decide (i) how long you should take for each element of the task, (ii) in what order you will complete them, and (iii) how to divide the workload.
For the group exercise, similar points apply, with the major difference being that it will be more difficult to get the requisite amount of airtime to showcase your analysis. People will be constantly fighting to express their own ideas, so if you are not proactive, you might simply not get to talk enough to score well on the exercise. I have written a more in-depth post on various strategies you can use to ensure you get enough airtime while also being a team player - I will quote it below.
Presentation:
I cannot give a lot of advice on the substantive content of the presentation without knowing more about the kinds of topics that can be assigned. That said, there are a couple of pointers I can give here. Firstly, I think what should be of core focus is clarity of expression rather than overall impressiveness of analysis. While you should of course aim to present the best view of the topic, you will realistically not blow the interviewers away with the brilliance of your points - and I do not think you should stress yourself unnecessarily by attempting that. Rather, what you should be constantly thinking about is how you can make your points clearer. With this kind of exercise, communication skills are what the interviewers are most concerned with; and quite reasonably so, given that good communication is a key part of this client-facing profession and also because a lot of a trainee's progress will depend on their ability to clearly express the challenges they are facing to the other team members. Thus, I advise you to have a structure that clearly delineates the parts of the presentation and continuously signpost throughout the presentation. To the extent possible, avoid jargon and express yourself in such a way that an average layman could walk away having understood all you had to say.
Finally, try to speak in a convincing manner. Style is generally not seen as decisive, but it is an element that is very important particularly for assessing a presentation task. The core questions here will be not only if your substantive points were good and clearly articulated, but whether they were expressed in a composed, convincing, and engaging manner. You should therefore ensure you have enough time to take strategic pauses, and to stop to emphasize certain key sentences and phrases to underline importance. Also, although at first this seemed to me a bit too informal, a strategy I have found useful for keeping an audience engaged is to ask rhetorical questions and speak from their perspective. Saying out loud things like 'So how does this matter for me?', 'What about this...?', 'You may now be thinking - 'this can't be right!' And I agree...' communicates to the audience that you are understanding their mental processes and are actively considering their questions, thus giving them reason to remain focused on your presentation.
Strengths-based interview:
I have recently written another post on this, I have also quoted it below.
Networking events:
If the firm has clarified that the networking events are unassessed, in all likelihood, they will play no part in the decision-making vis-à-vis your progression. They are likely only meant to give you a moment to relax and learn a bit more about life at the firm, so I would take the opportunity to do just that, without worrying about how every part of the interaction could be perceived by the graduate recruitment team.
Finally, congratulations for getting at this stage and all the best in the AC! I am sure you will nail it
