I really appreciate this Ram!
I have been told to prepare for the following:
- Paired exercise and a Group exercise: Assessors will observe behaviour and interaction with a group, taking note of both verbal and non-verbal behaviour.
- Presentation: Short verbal presentation to prepare and present to an assessor. Will be able to use AI to help prepare my presentation. Topic to be assigned on the day.
- Interview: Structured around a set of strengths-based questions.
- The day will also include informal networking events before and after the assessed activities.
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
Just before
@Ram Sabaratnam gets back to you, I found this article on strengths-based interviews I thought I would link
here. I have not completed this type of interview personally, but based on a variety of sources it seems to involve more of a focus on personal questions such as:
- How do you spend your free time?
- What subjects did you most enjoy in school/university and why?
- What are kinds of work you like/dislike?
- What are the things that motivate you the most?
People describe it as being less formal than competency interviews, and also say they are harder to prepare for because how wide the scope of the questions can be. I suspect that for this reason, it is difficult to prepare a lot for the substantive part of the interview. However, you should invest time in improving your ability to express your substantive points about past experiences and personality traits. Thus, I think you should concentrate on mock interviews and/or on recording yourself answering randomly selected strengths-based questions. Then, you should critically assess your answer to determine how you could have expressed yourself in a more articulate and structured manner.
Hi
@Kakaboo as some other forum members have said, I think more often the problem with group exercises is that you will not be able to contribute as much as you would like, as everyone will be constantly fighting over airtime. The only context in which you would be asked to say more is if you are particularly quiet and one of the other attendees wants to show team spirit - one of the pieces of advice regarding group exercises I have very often come across is to show collaboration/leadership skills by seeking to include the person who is speaking up the least. I never personally implemented this as it seemed to me to come with a significant risk of both putting the person on the spot and in signaling them out as 'inactive', which can do more harm than good.
That said, I have seen other people do this is a very direct manner, stopping the exercise just to say to someone "Is there something you would want to say here?". I imagine this can be a quite anxiety-inducing experience and I think you are right in aiming to avoid that. To do that, the best strategy is simply to seek to be among the more active people in the room (which independently of this I would also argue is the right strategy to maximize your chances of scoring well). To achieve this despite the fight over airtime (and just for generally elevating your performance), consider doing the following:
- Offer to keep the time: this shows a proactive attitude while not being very demanding as to your mental focus. It also enables you to (i) avoid taking the responsibility of any required writing, which is more demanding; and (ii) naturally intervene at certain points in the discussion to mention time considerations, which is also an opportunity for you to add substantive points.
- Try to introduce structure and organization: although many candidates will want to immediately start the analysis, instead of simply throwing yourself into discussing substantive points, try to introduce a framework: what points will you discuss, in what order, how much time will you spend on each, and what relevant assessment criteria should you keep in mind when analyzing the points? This will ensure a more comprehensive overview and a more clear output.
- Focus on finding more niche/less-obvious analysis points: as you are given a brief for the group exercise task, you will normally have a bit of preparation time during which you can think what points to bring up. You will find some points that are really intuitive which you will know the others likely also thought of. Instead of focusing on those and fighting with everyone to get to express those obvious points, I would use that time (and the extra thinking time in the initial discussion phase when everyone is fighting to say the obvious points) to find relevant ideas that others may have missed. The, as the discussion is winding down on that subpart of the task, I would mention these more niche points. This will avoid making you seem competitive and also showcase ability for more nuanced analysis.
- Focus on synthesis and weighing: another similar strategy for impressive contribution which may not require too much fighting over airtime is to once again seek to contribute as the discussion on the substantive points is winding down. What you can do here is intervene to summarize what everyone has contributed, weigh their points, and then make an informed argument as to what the decision should be.
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