Interview help please…in tray task?

[Tinks15]

I have an interview next week for an admin role within a school. Part of my interview process is to do an in tray task, i’ve not had to do anything like this before. Has anyone done one? If so…what should I expect?

I saw a thread similar yesterday, if not yours maybe look at advice given.

Is this the irish civil service EO in tray by any chance. I know a few people doing it next batch.

My top tip, the two urgent tasks that come in, the second urgent task has to be completed before the first one. So start the first one but keep an eagle 3ye out for the second urgent task and get that one done before going back to the first.

You will have a set of tasks and are expected to prioritise and complete them. So maybe write a letter, ignore something, Do up a spreadsheet.

Yeah it’s a time management/ organisational activity so they want to see you prioritising certain things, you normally are able to show your reasoning so you can explain why you thought X was a priority over Y. Good luck!

E-tray i mean

I haven’t done one myself, but I have set them in the past. The exercise normally requires you to respond or say what you would do when faced with a number of scenarios. It is likely to also have some expectation for you to prioritise by importance. I would expect that for a school environment there will be one relating to safeguarding and successful candidates will be able to spot it and deal with it as priority.

Sorry, in a school! So not an e-tray!

There is likely to be an interruption (visitor, urgent phone call) to force you to review.

Is it that you don't know what an in tray task is at all?

It's basically testing your ability to deal with email, manage priorities and write/do other standard administration stuff.

So you'll have a (probably) virtual inbox, which has some tasks in it to start with, with more which may appear throughout if it's a bit more complicated or not if it's quite simple. You read all the things in there at the beginning, prioritise them and start doing what the instructions in each task says - keeping an eye out for new tasks coming in and reprioritising as required based on the new tasks and if they're more urgent than what you're already doing.

Make sure you look at how much time you have an allocated your time proportionally - you don't want to spend 1 hr on task 1 and then have 15 minutes total for 2, 3 and 4.

You may be asked to talk through what you did and why. Safeguarding, confidentiality and gdpr may come up.

Agree with other posters. You'll probably get a phone call from a parent that is urgent so make a mental record of questions, name of child, tutor group, take phone number to call back. You will probably have to send an all parent email relating to school closure or inset days to see how you write and punctuation etc. As well as other tasks such as spreadsheets, word docs etc