Recruitment Agency Tests

[Naughtynoonoo]

I am applying for a PA position through an agency.

I have been out of the market for about 4 years and am very very rusty. I have found a touch typing site which I have been pratising on, but do you know where I can find any other sites to refresh on word, excel, powerpoint etc?

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I was in the same position as you a year ago - returning to work through an agency after a break and very rusty on all my MS Office. The girl who interviewed me was very nice and said it was only understandable that I would be rusty after a length of time out of the workplace (9 months) and she passed me on the strength of references and previous experience.

If the agency is worth its salt it will understand that you've been out of the workplace for a while and make allowances. Other than playing around with your computer I can't offer any other advice regarding websites or suchlike, sorry.

Good luck with the interview though!

don't know of any sites, but will have a look. i did only a word test, which started off easily - using bold, underline, tabs - then it got harder with macros etc. after that they do a wpm test. it was all done on screen and they give you a % score afterwards.

sounds more scary than it was though good luck!

Thanks for your replies, its amazing how I knocked up my cv (lost original) so must have some memory cells left up there. I have been practising on the touchtyping site and seem to be ok, give me a nappy any day of the week and I can do it with my eyes closed !

Honestly, an hour at a computer when you get this job and you'll wonder what you were worried about. It's like riding a bike - even if you've not done it for years and years you can still remember the basic principals and you'll be doing stunts and impressing your peers with your expertise in no time.

I went through Reed to start with and their tests are very unforgiving (I got about 55% on my Word and 45% on Excel and touch typing was about 50wpm whereas I'm proficient with Word and Excel and typing is more like 65wpm)

You'll be fine chuck. Let us know you get on.

Hello, I have just signed up for office work with an agency after 2 years out of an office role and the assessment was quite difficult I found, especially in the Excel spreadsheets section. I saw the agency used a website called Qwiz for these assessments. I thought I did rubbish but actually passed at 100% for the word processing and 83% at Excel at level 3.

If you have a bit of time, as a pimp I'd recommend that you put the effort into going a bit further with Excel. I see that there is considerable demand for people who get beyond the simple data entry parts of it.