Welcome to episode 2 of the Graduate Job Podcast!
In this second episode I speak with career expert, Denise Taylor as we explore the topic of assessment centres. Denise is an award winning career coach, best-selling author, and chartered psychologist, and she shares her experience of how to impress at all aspects of an assessment centre, from the group exercises, through to presentations and face to face interviews. Having designed and run hundreds of assessment centres over the last 20 years Denise is able to share amazing tips that will help you to ensure that you will impress on the big day.
You can download the podcast to your computer or listen to it here on the blog. Additionally, you can subscribe via iTunes or Stitcher radio.
MORE SPECIFICALLY IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:
- What assessment centres are and why companies use them – 3.20
- What companies are looking for from candidates at an assessment centre – 4.08
- Common exercises candidates will face at an assessment centre – 4.38
- Details of how the assessment centre will be structured (format, length, number of candidates) – 6.41
- Top tactics for performing in a group exercise – 8.27
- Roles to take on ensure you get noticed in the group exercise – 11.19
- Common pitfalls to avoid in group exercises –15.22
- How to give brilliant presentations – 17.07
- How to impress in face to face interviews- 20.59
- Denise’s top 3 tips for acing interviews – 24.00
- How to ensure you are in the correct frame of mind before an assessment centre – 27.44
- The secret tip to impressing after the assessment centre – 30.42
LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Check out the ‘How to Get a Graduate Job’ step-by-step online course at https://howtogetagraduatejob.com/
- Don’t even think about applying for graduate jobs until you’ve read my free guide, ‘The 5 steps you must take before applying for graduate jobs’. Click here NOW. It will completely change the way you apply for jobs!
- Would you like a free 30-minute video coaching call? Simply select a time that works here https://calendly.com/gradjob/ We can go over your CV, application, or anything that you are struggling with.
- Assessment Day – One of the top providers of psychometric tests. Click HERE and support the show
- Career Gym – Use code GJP to get 20% off all of their tests!
- Job Test Prep – One of the top providers of psychometric tests. Click HERE and support the show
- Amazing People (Denise’s excellent website)
- Now You’ve Been Shortlisted
(Highly recommended for a step by step guide through the interview and assessment centre process. Click image below to buy on Amazon!)
Winning Interview Answers for First-time Job Hunters (Great book covering answers to a host of difficult questions. (Click image below to buy on Amazon!)
How to Get a Job in a Recession 2012
Please leave an honest review and rating on iTunes! They are extremely helpful and I read each and every one of them.
Transcript – Episode 2 – How to Ace Assessment Centres with Denise Taylor
Announcer: Welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast, your home for weekly information and inspiration to help you get the graduate job of your dreams.
James: Hello and welcome to the second episode of the Graduate Job Podcast. This week I speak with careers expert, Denise Taylor as we explore the topic of assessment centres. Denise is an award winning career coach, best-selling author and chartered psychologist and shares her experience of how to impress at all aspects of an assessment centre, from the group exercises, through to presentations and face to face interviews. Having designed and run hundreds of assessment centres over the last 20 years Denise is able to share amazing tips that will help you to perform on the big day. A transcript of the episode and links to everything we discuss can be found in the show notes at graduatejobpodcast.com/assessmentcentres. So without further ado, let’s go straight to episode 2.
James: We are honoured to have with us this week career expert, Denise Taylor. Denise is an award winning career coach, chartered psychologist and the founder of Amazing People. She is a regular on TV and the radio; author of numerous books including Now You’ve Been Shortlisted and How to Get a Job in a Recession ; and has over 20 years’ experience in helping people be successful in their job search.
Denise, welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast.
Denise: Thank you for inviting me.
James: You are very welcome. I have given the listeners a brief introduction but before we dive into talking about assessment centres, would you like to expand on your business and how you became one of the top career coaches in the U.K.?
Denise: Well, as a chartered psychologist you’ve got numerous areas that you specialist in. What I’ve always been fascinated in is about people and about helping people to get their best. An area where people struggle is knowing what sort of career to do. They’ve often had very poor career advice or they just didn’t know what to do so they made poor choices. So my work seems to be divided up between helping people work out what’s the right choice to do whether it be a 15 year old thinking of A levels or somebody who is disappointed that their career as an architect or management consultant hasn’t worked out the way they like. And then of course, there’s people who just need, they know what they want to do but they just struggle with how to pass assessment centres which is what we are going to be talking about today.
James: Excellent. I know from the research I’ve conducted with listeners, is that assessment centres is certainly one of the areas that people are concerned about. There’s a big knowledge gap out there.
Denise: Yeah, and you know, I always think, assessments centres is your place to shine. So that’s what I’m talking to people is you’ve got to think it that way. If you go into an assessment centre with this fear of dread, oh, no, it’s an assessment centre, then you’re not really coming at it from a very positive place. So that’s the first thing to do, you’ve got to look forward to all these chances to shine.
James: Definitely. As you say, in Now You’ve Been Shortlisted, unless the companies think you could do the job they wouldn’t have been invited in the first place.
Denise: Absolutely. When I’m working in an assessment centre, all of the people that turn up could conceivably be offered a job because it’s normally for schemes where there is quite a lot of people. So, you know, you’re there because we think you can do it and we want the best out of you. You’ve just got now to deliver that, really.
James: So, talking at high level, then, so starting at the beginning, what is an assessment centre and why do companies use them?
Denise: Many, many years ago I would always hear assessment centre is not a place; it’s an event. I mean, it’s still true. An assessment centre is your chance, as I said, to shine and it’s where you’re not just going to have an interview but you’re going to be able to perform in a number of different ways. You’re going to participate almost always in an interview, almost always in a group exercise. There may be presentations. There may be role plays. There might be psychometric tests to do. There’s a whole range of different things. So it’s lots and lots of opportunities. You can’t just blow one thing, if one thing you think afterwards you could have done better. Well, that’s fine. You’ve got another chance to shine and in another exercise.
James: And what are companies looking for from the candidates at an assessment centre?
Denise: We’re looking for the best person to do the job. And we’re looking, again, competencies. I don’t know of a single assessment centre where you’re not being assessed against competencies. That’s one of the things everybody should do in preparation, play what competencies are being assessed. I mean, you can guess but you may get it wrong because different organizations have different focuses and thinking about the competencies helps you to think about how you can prepare.
James: I know there’s a wide variety of different assessment centres but is there always common exercises which candidates will face at each one?
Denise: Well, almost always there will be an interview. You know, sometimes interview isn’t the best way to gather evidence but candidates would find it very strange if we just used assessments with never speaking with people. So, you will almost always find an interview. You will almost always find a presentation. You will almost always find a group discussion. Those are the key things. But there can be some very, very specific things related to a job. I remember being and working on an assessment centre for one of the telecom companies and we had people working out how or demonstrating how they respond to angry customers on the phone which is going to be part of their job. So think about some of the, think about the job that you’re applying for and then any elements of that could be used as part of an assessment centre.
James: Thinking about the application funnel from the thousands of people that will submit the initial application through to then telephone interviews and aptitude tests and numerical tests, what percentage of people will finally make it through to the assessment centre?
Denise: Oh, gosh. I don’t think I can quite remember that but you know, I know with some of the assessment centres I’m involved with, in fact, one of the major ones, they have literally thousands of applications. And from that – now, I’m guess now; it’s based on judgement – but probably only 10 percent are going to get through to the first stage of the assessment. And that’s because an awful lot of people do very, very poor applications. They don’t read the instructions. They don’t read things properly. I sometimes wonder whether people actually start with a false name just so that they get, you know, an idea about what’s coming up. I’m not sure because you often have to give quite a lot of personal information but some people, I think, they just don’t really do a very good application and they know they’re not going to take things forward.
James: How many people do there tend to be in an assessment centre? So if you go along, how many people are you going to be, in effect, competing against?
Denise: As a psychologist whose designed hundreds, literally hundreds of assessment centres, I think six is a really good number to have but what can often happen is you can have teams of assessors. So, for example, the Civil Service Fast Stream, there will be six teams of assessors there. So there will be 18 assessors, about 72 candidates all there on the same day. I think I’ve got my numbers right. So, you could be in an assessment centre with masses of people but in the group that you are part of, then you’re probably going to be in a group of six or 12. And that’s going to be a more realistic number for most assessment centres.
James: It’s a lot less daunting than 70.
Denise: Well, but you would be working within those 72. You’d be within a subgroup of six.
James: And how long do they tend to last? Is it still half a day, or full day, or shorter?
Denise: Yeah, I think generally we’re looking at a day; and a key tip, if you’ve had to travel a long distance do stay the night before. You know, you can stay in a travel lodge or something cheap. I’ve interviewed people who’ve said – through a London assessment centre – who have said they’ve set off from Leeds at often they leave at 3:00 a.m. in the morning. It’s like, what were you thinking of? They haven’t performed very well. But generally they’re going to take a day. Now, some assessments centres -not ones I’ve specifically worked on – others I hear about, where at lunchtime -and it’s a bit like the X Factor or something – half of them go home and they just proceed with the ones that have passed the morning session which seems a bit tough but I suppose it’s what is right for that organization.
James: Moving on to group exercises. Again, I know this is one area that is particularly daunting to candidates mainly because I don’t think they’ve had the opportunity to practice them in the past. What type of group exercises are most commonly used at the moment in graduate recruitment? Are people still building towers from paper?
Denise: Yes. I mean, I remember doing that with – not just with graduates – and the reason we get people to do things like that is because we’re just thinking about how people work effectively as a team, but it’s a bit false. It’s not the sort of thing you’re likely to do. So often we work with people on tasks related to the job. So if someone is looking for a communications job, it may be how you would put something together related to that; you know, how you put a short internal video together and get people working on something. So it could be something to do with that. It could be something that we call assigned roles. Everybody gets a brief to prepare in advance and you go in there as, you know, working for some department. So you have to be able to use your brief rather than just the information that you’ve got in your head. You’re probably not going to know in advance what the assessment centre is going to be about, although I think there’s various websites like Student Room that should be able to provide some information from people that have recently gone through. But you’ve just got to be ready for anything, anything that you’re referred. Key thing with a group exercise, if you need to speak up, and you know, not everybody is highly extrovert. Some people are quite quiet. But you can have masses of good ideas but if you don’t speak up, me as an assessor, wouldn’t know about these ideas in your head. So you have to speak up. And you probably have to speak up more than you would normally. But equally, you don’t want to take over because just speaking and trying to come across well yourself at the expense of other people, well as assessors we don’t like that either.
James: I know when I’ve been an assessor in group exercises, as you mentioned, there’s been candidates I’ve been looking at and they’ve not said a word in the entire 45 minutes or half hour and how can you give them marks to go through it if they don’t speak.
Denise: No, and you can’t make a judgement. Some assessment centres will get people to review their performance afterwards. But still, you know, several had wished they said this, is not actually giving us as assessors evidence because that’s what we’re doing, whether we’re looking at the group exercise or role play and interview, we’re gathering evidence that we can compare against our competency framework. So you need to provide information for us to be able to make a judgement.
James: What are the roles that people can take on in the group exercise to make sure that they get noticed?
Denise: I mean, something I always used to do, because I’ve been to masses of assessment centres as a candidate myself and, you know, I was very shy of it when I was younger. But I could write neatly. So, I would often offer to be the scribe and to write things at the flipchart. So if that’s a possibility and you write neatly and you’re good at listening and summarizing, that’s something you can do because as you say, can I just confirm that this is what you want me to capture, at least you’re speaking up.
The other good thing is to take up the timekeeping role. There’s often a stopwatch on the table, there’s clock around the room. But if you do it you have to do it properly. Many times somebody says I’ll be the timekeeper and then they never give a time check. So again, it’s something that it’s good because it’s a role that you can play.
Now, you might not want to be at the flipchart because you feel that you can’t contribute. You’ve got to think about what plays better to your strengths. We’re always thinking about people that are the quietest, at least that’s a good thing that you can do. But also, you get the people in a group exercise – and you probably noticed this yourself – they are very keen to speak up and they forget about everybody else in the group exercise. So what we need to do is if you find that somebody is doing that, you can say something like, we’ve heard a lot about you but what about some of the more quieter people? Even if you’re one of the more quieter people yourself, you can say like Denise, what are your views? I have not heard much about what you’ve got to say. And then, you know, and then you’re bringing in somebody that might be even quieter than you are.
James: Yeah, I think it’s a really good point about the scriber. I always have that’s really good role to take on because you then tend to be stood up whilst everyone else in the group is sat down. So you almost always naturally just develop more of a dominant position and you can start then to bring in other people.
Denise: Yeah.
James: Sorry, I didn’t catch that. What was that? Did I capture what you said correctly? And as you said, you can naturally adopt the role of, you know, bringing in the quieter members of the team to say, oh, Barry, you’ve not mentioned much. What do you think about this?
Denise: Absolutely. And, you know, some assessment centres are quite complex the topics that are discussed and you might feel a bit overwhelmed by the amounts of data. If you’re more facilitative and the assessors will probably notice that it’s lighter on content and more on process but it still means that you’re getting quite a lot of air time out there and yeah, people will look at you as a more of a leadership position and at that point you need to take it on. And so, when you find out that James isn’t saying very much– James is taking over, it’s a bit like, James we keep hearing your point of view. I know you’ve got lots of good ideas but can we just hear what everyone else has got to say. And that’s quite a good thing about being a bit more assertive as well.
James: Definitely. I like your point about the timekeeper. I’ve seen that quite a few times. People are told to, you know, go in and adopt the role of the timekeeper. So they’ll fight to say, I’ll be the timekeeper but then they, it’s somebody else who says, hey, guys, we’ve got five minutes left. Should we actually try and actually answer the question?
Denise: Yeah. And I think that everybody in a group exercise should write down the time. I know a lot of people don’t wear watches now and you know, going to an assessment centre, do dig your watch out because you can’t keep looking at your phone because ultimately they’ll ask you to turn them off, but you’ve got to keep on pressing it to get the time to come up. So dig out your retro watch from your drawer and write it down so that even if somebody is keeping track of time they might not be doing a very good job and at least you can see how things go. So for example, if the exercise is 50 minutes and it’s a group exercise, then if they’re still talking about process and how is it going to work after 10 minutes, it’s like, we need to move on. Just because somebody says that they are going to do the timekeeping role, you don’t have to rely on them. You can demonstrate some capabilities with that as well.
James: You mentioned talking over people is a trait that people shouldn’t be doing. Are there any other common pitfalls that people need to avoid?
Denise: Okay. So don’t over-talk is one. Speak up, is another one. Keep focused on the task because I think there’s over-talking and then there’s just speaking. You know, I don’t want to hear a load of stuff that isn’t adding value to the group exercise because as an assessor it’s like, what was the point of that? Yes, lots of airtime but it wasn’t very relevant. So what you say should be relevant. And again, that’s something you can do with saying to other people, I’m not quite sure how that relates to the topic that we’re discussing. Perhaps you could let us know. That’s a good way to tackle it when somebody else is just saying too much but also monitor your own performance. Now, I know I’m saying an awful lot that you’ve got to be doing, and if you’re not the sort of person that has much experience in getting involved in groups, and you then have this fear about a group exercise, well look about how you can practice. Think about when you’re at university and the groups that you’ve been involved with. You know, start treating that in a bit more of a slightly formalized way where you act as if you’re at the group exercise and maybe, you know, if you’re playing rugby and you go along to committee meetings, again, that you speak up and you start pretending that you’re in a group exercise. Well you are in a group discussion. Start, you know, talking bringing other people in ‘cause that’s going to help you to feel more relaxed about what’s coming up.
James: Definitely. So moving on to presentations, what sort of presentations can a candidate be expected to make?
Denise: Well, there’s only two styles of presentations and one of them is where you’re told in advance and then you can prepare; and the other is where you get, maybe, 30 minutes’ notice to prepare. The ones where you’ve been told in advance and you can bring everything along, I expect it to be completely slick. I expect if it’s a 10 minutes presentation I want it to be finished very, very close to 10 minutes and whatever the time limit is, I’m going to cut you off if you go over. So you do need to practice that.
Now, we’re a lot more forgiving when you’ve only been given 30 minutes to prepare. People will often come in with their notes, which is generally fine but I think rather than writing out verbatim and read it out, what you need is the key things that you want to say and to say that. And do get an idea about time. I’m looking for content. I’m also looking for structure. So if you’ve got a 10 minute presentation, then you can have, you know, a minute and a half on setting the scene, thinking of a minute and a half at the end to close things down and think about the time in between, or the four points that you need to make and how you should allocate your time; a bit like when we prepare for writing an essay. Think about the time that you’ve got and then as you do your presentation you can make good use of your time, because I’m going to down mark you if you stop in three minutes when you have 10 minutes to go.
James: No, I definitely agree and you mentioned the presentations need to be slick. I know if people are, say, bringing in PowerPoint slides or have been asked to prepare an accompanying deck to go with it, I’ve got high expectations in terms of how I expect them to look, whether it’s, you know, using the company branding on the slides, because people who will be assessing you will more likely be people who work at the firm and they’re used to dealing with PowerPoint, et cetera, all day. So they will have a high standard of what they expect them to look like.
Denise: Absolutely, and the branding, really key. If you’re going to the NHS, get the NHS logo up there. They’re blue; so you use blue as well. You know, do these things that give them a subtle idea about how you are. And often, I know when I was doing these sorts of things, if you have your first slide as if you’re a member of the organization so they’re beginning just to see how you fit in. My big and bugbear with watching presentations is when people just read out the bullets from the slide. Your slides are not your crib. They are there to enhance what it is that you have to say and when people are putting up pictures and then they’re talking around the image, I’m quite impressed by that one. I do not want people just to read out bullets. Having said that, when you’re doing it on the day with a very limited amount of time, then you’re going to have to have bullets because you’re going to have to refer things to. Quick tip; if they’re still doing it with paper — I haven’t seen… actually, I have seen paper presentations recently -– if you can write things on in pencil, then you can write in flip top pen over the top of it, so there are things like that, but generally, you know, it’s all done online now so that the, it makes good use of the technology. When you struggle and you don’t know how to put your pen drive in or you can’t give it the right size, you should know these sorts of things. Organizations use PowerPoint. Even if you are a Mac user, you make sure that you can use PowerPoint.
James: And always bring plenty of paper copies on the day just in case there’s a power cut or the computer stops working.
Denise: Yeah of course, that’s if you’re bringing it in advance. You know, it’s when you’re bringing it on the day and you might not get that, but you should. It’s always nice when you can go in and plan to bring things so you can hand out to people, not necessarily all the slides, but like the equivalent of a hand-out that you would do to leave behind if you are making a presentation. That’s a nice touch as well.
James: So, moving on to interviews. What sorts of interviews will graduates most likely face?
Denise: I do think it’s going to be a competency based interview. So, I’m going to talk about competencies now but in all these exercises we’re not just making judgements on, this is the process; this is the content. It’s all related to the competencies. So, it’s not going to be what you think of this or what is your view of that one. What we’re looking for is examples of about how you’ve done things in the past. So, can you give me an example about when you’ve demonstrated drive? Can you give me an example about when you’ve had to be flexible because you’ve had limited resources. Think about these examples in advance.
Most people know about STAR which is situation, task, action and result but they don’t always do what they know. I mean, there’s different acronyms but basically, we need to understand a specific example about how you’ve done something and what the end result was. That’s what I coach my clients to do at some of the assessment centres they go to. That’s why I say, it’s part of my introduction. I’m going to be looking for a specific example. I tell them what I’m looking for just as a reminder and then they don’t do it. They go, oh, well, when I’m working with people and it’s all this general stuff that comes back. It’s not specific. It’s not really addressing the question that I’ve asked and they’re not going to be performing well. You should find out what the competencies are you are going to look for and if it’s a particular organization and one of the competencies is commercial awareness, then you need to think about how you can demonstrate that. You can’t just say, well, I’m just out of uni, I’ve never had to. Well, think about the part-time work that you’ve had. Think about some of the assignments you’ve done. Think about some internships or voluntary work. You need to be able to provide an answer and an example. You can’t just say, nah, forget that because it’s not really coming across as very, you’re not coming across as very well if that’s how you respond and believe me people say that frequently, sorry, I don’t really have an example about that one. Well, duuh, that’s you a quarter down on the interview now.
James: And as you said, the companies aren’t shy about promoting what their values or competencies are. They’re normally front and centre in the middle of the application page online.
Denise: Yeah, because generally when you are applying online, you’re having to give examples as part of the application process. So you should know what they are. And you can use the same example. Sometimes people say to me, I’ve already used this one on my application form. Can I use it again? Well, of course, you can. I haven’t got your application. I’m not comparing what you’ve written on your application. And the application was to get you to the interview or the assessment centre. Now, yes, please, you can use that again. And also, you can take the same examples such as a part-time job that you had and you can use that to demonstrate working as part of a team, dealing with problems, showing resilience. It can all relate to the same example. It’s not that you can only use a particular thing once.
James: What would be the top three tips that you would give candidates how to ace an interview?
Denise: The first thing is, answer the question. Listen. I mean, honestly it’s the key one; listen and answer the questions. Oh, what am I going to do? Listen to the question and make sure you answer it. Prepare examples in advance and at the end when they say to you, have you got any questions, don’t just say, well, you seem to have answered everything. It’s such a weak ending. Ask questions and avoid things like what sort of holidays are there; how much do you pay; what sort of development are you going to do. I want you to ask me questions about the organization that you’re applying to, what are some of the key challenges that are facing the organization, read things about the organization. If you’re planning to go onto a super market scheme, goodness, there’s been so much in the news. You know, today as we’re recording this, so you might want to say, you know, Morrison’s decision to price match against Lidl and Aldi if you’re going for the Morrison graduate scheme, you know, what impact is that going to have on the business bottom line? You know, it shows you’re paying attention to what’s in the news.
James: As you said, I think listening to the actual question is such a key one. So many times you ask someone a question and they answer with well, thank you for your question but here is something that I want to tell you about.
Denise: I know. They think they’re trainee politicians. It’s not clever. And even if you don’t know the answer, it’s best to say something like, well, actually, I don’t have an example of having dealt with a difficult customer. That’s an interesting question because I’ve also wondered about that because other people I talk to always seem to be having to deal with that situation. And I think what it is is I’m the sort of person that listens to customer and always wants to do a good job. So we never reach a point where they are difficult because I can respond well. So for an example, when a customer calls to me and they’ve got a query, this is how I deal with it. And then maybe to say at the end, now I know that wasn’t addressing your question about dealing with difficult customers because you know, I think I’ve been lucky because my customers aren’t difficult. But actually, I don’t think it is luck. I think it is about the way I’ve always handled customers. Something like that would— I’d probably be quiet at first about that and I might come back and say, really, have you never had a difficult time with a customer? What sort of customers are the most challenging that you’ve had to deal with? What are the ones that have tested your personal responses? So, you know, assessors will sometimes come back and it’s not just we’re asking questions, you speak and then we ask the next question. We’re going to test you out a bit as well.
James: Thinking back to when I went through the process. I’m sure – I know for a fact – that I answered when I was asked if I had any questions at the end, I know I said, actually yeah. I think you’ve answered them all. So, I’ve fallen foul of some of your “what not to do” already.
Denise: What I think is really good, James, is that you write some questions down in advance. So I think if you write things down in advance and then literally you’ve got them written down either – because you don’t want them on your iPad that you have to find it in a bag but you know a woman would probably have them in a handbag easy to pull out. You might have it in your jacket pocket. But the answer, I came with eight questions and open it up and say, you’ve answered seven of them. The one question that you haven’t answered is..…. And then on the very rare occasion where they have answered them all, you can say, well I came up five questions and you’ve answered them all. Look, here they are, and sort of make it a bit of a joke.
James: That’s a really good point. How can a candidate insure that they are in the correct frame of mind on the day itself?
Denise: I think it’s in all sorts of situations that you want to think about this one. What I think is a really good idea, if you drive there or if you’ve got on the train, as you get out of the car, as you get out of the train, you think like right, I’m really going to, or as you leave the hotel room. I’m really looking forward to this. Tell yourself you’re going to enjoy it. This is my great opportunity to demonstrate just how well I can do this job. So, self-talk. That’s what athletes do. That’s what you need to do, and is to think about that.
At various points you may well find other candidates are playing games, you know, and they’re going to big themselves up and try and put you down to try to get some psychological advantage. Just ignore them. If you’re going to talk, talk about general topics. Don’t talk about assessment centres and if somebody starts going on about how brilliant they are, just say, you know, that person is feeling quite nervous because they’re trying to put me down. So just, you know, just let it gloss over. You can take a book to read so that you can refer to that. What can come quite useful is, go to the loo and you know, as you’re in a private room, you know, you can sort of look in the mirror and go like, I’m going to enjoy this. When you can’t do it, silently in your head as well. But I think sometimes it can be just like, walk outside, go to the loo and say yep, I am. I am going to enjoy this. The next 40 minutes I’m going to show how great I can be at the interview, the role play, the presentation; whatever it is that you’ve got going on. And then when it ends, if something hasn’t gone well, it’s like, you know what? I did well on all these different areas. Just don’t focus on the one question that you screwed up. Think about the five, six questions that you did do well and then say, you know what? It’s over. The written exercise is coming up next. I’m going to do some in a bit. Yeah, I’m going to go into that one feeling great again. If you can’t stop yourself thinking about it, pinch yourself. You know, something like that is going to break the negative thoughts in your head and make you feel a little bit better for the next thing.
James: I liked your comment in the book about not trying to be somebody else, but just trying to be a really good version of yourself.
Denise: Of course. Yeah. So many people you think, who are you pretending to be? You know, I think it’s not just now in midlife about being authentic. I think if you try to be somebody that you’re not and you get the job, you’ve got to carry on being that person forever. How hard is that going to be? So, the more you are clearer about who you are, where you’re strengths lie, then the better able it is to be you and rather than pretend to be somebody else.
James: One final thing, at the end of the assessment centre, an interesting thing from your book, Now You’ve Been Shortlisted, was you recommend writing a thank you note to the assessors.
Denise: Yeah, because not many people do. And it’s not always possible because you don’t always know who but if you’ve, you’ve normally got some information with the people’s name. So, you know, when you get home, drop an email or get something in the post if it’s going to arrive the next day, just saying about how much you enjoyed meeting them and reinforcing some of the things that you did well. If you sort of didn’t do so great in a particular area, you can say, I know I’ve fluffed that question. Going back I thought about such and such. Now, it’s not always going to be taken into account because often as assessment centres we’re doing the wash-up that night. So decisions are already made. Sometimes it works better with small organizations but it could still work with large organizations when they’re not making a decision there and then. But it’s something that is being done, you know, at the end of the whole assessment centre. You’re not going to lose anything out by doing it and it might not make a difference, but it might. So, you know, why not do it?
James: Definitely. Denise we’ve reached the end of our time together this morning. Thank you for your time. You’ve given the listeners a treasure trove of brilliant advice there on assessment centres. So before we close, what is the best way for people to reach out to you and what you do?
Denise: Okay. Well, my website is amazingpeople.co.uk and come and look on my website. It’s a big site but it’s got lots of information there about all the services I offer, and there’s a number of free programs that you can sign up for as well, including five days to get a job faster. And a seven day program when you need help in thinking about what is it I want to do. There are over a thousand items on the blog. So there’s plenty there to keep you going, if you’ve got nothing else to do with your time. But yeah, if you think I can help, then please get in touch.
James: Thank you, Denise. All those details will be in the show notes on the website.
Denise, thank you, again, for appearing on the Graduate Job Podcast.
Denise: Okay, and thanks for inviting me. Bye, bye.
James: Many thanks again to Denise for sharing so many insights into the inner workings of assessment centres. I know from first hand experience that they can be daunting events but with the correct preparation they can be places where you can shine. My personal top 3 takeaways from the episode were; firstly the need to ensure that you listen and then actually answer the questions that you were asked, secondly, that you ensure you are in a positive frame of mind walking in on the day itself, and that you actually believe that you can get the job, and thirdly to drop them as thank you note after the event itself, you never know, it could make all the difference.
The full transcript of today’s episode can be found on the website at graduatejobpodcast.com/assessmentcentres. Please do get in touch via twitter as well @gradjobpodcast Finally please do leave a review on Itunes,I read everyone and its great to hear your feedback.
Do join us next week when we have bestselling author Richard Maun sharing his 3 secrets to finding a job.
I hope you enjoyed the episode today, but more importantly I hope you use it and apply it. See you next week.