Assessment days

[bakedbeanzontoast]

Hello everyone,

I'm currently looking for work. I'm used to interviews, however today I experienced as assessment day. I think I did ok on one component, very well on the actual interview but terrible on the task based stuff.

I suppose I'm just talking out loud here, but how do you think they make their decisions on who to reject and who to take based on these sorts of things? Would people be rejected unless they were exemplary at all tasks? Like a lot of people I guess, I'm good at some things but horrendous at others. Has anyone here ever been on the other side, so worked for a company that scores people based on performance at an assessment day?

I'm sorry if this post doesn't make sense. It's been a very long day.

I can't answer your question exactly but I've just posted a thread of my own about repeated rejections post-interview, and if you have a look at it, three of them have been assessment days. My feedback has been sparse and not very useful. Apart from the first one I actually thought the second went ok and the third even better but rejected nontheless, awaiting feedback for the third. It's hard when you have these as it's sooo time consuming for me to prepare for them for weeks in advance and then still get a rejection with hardly and advice about how to improve.

One of the interviewers at one of the companies did say he knows of other companies using a scoring criteria and using external advice or external staff who look at candidates answers and score them and basically say 'pick x y and z' based on whatever their criteria is, but he said the company I was interviewing at didn't do that.

Thank you @MeadowHay - popping over for a look. Apparently we will find out next week...it crushes me when I get a rejection. I find the assessment day thing exceptionally difficult I have to say.

When I've assessed using this method, each section has been scored and totals combined. It isn't automatically the top 5 (or however many available positions) that are recruited but the bottom ones will automatically be rejected. For the higher scoring ones we look at the individuals and who will suit each position.

Thank you. In my case I know I bombed one of the tests, didn't do very well on another but I think the interview and other task went well. I just really want to know either way. At least it is better to go into the weekend knowing nothing rather than getting a rejection.

What sort of job are you applying for? I've recruited using assessment days and what I looked for largely depended on the role.

Hi, HR director here. Assessment days are usually designed to assess various competencies and in most instances each competency will be measured at least twice (eg teamwork and collaboration may be measured on your examples given in an interview, and again in a group exercise).

Each company I've worked for does it slightly differently but generally you get scored against a set of criteria for each competency the exercise is measured (e.g 1 being poor, 5 being outstanding) and then given an overall score for the competency.

So that is a long way of saying don't worry, they don't expect people to be perfect at everything

I think it depends on what you did well / badly on. The assessment will be looking at a broad range of skills for all parts of the business, so if you did badly on something that was totally irrelevant to the role I can't see why that would be an issue.

Thank you all.

@mclady its a research position. I am a qualitative researcher but am terrible at quants. I think the interview went very well, I think the group work went ok but I didn't cope well with the tasks.

I do have a lot of experience in my field and am highly qualified, but, and I am embarrassed to say this, I just know I didn't do well on the tests. Oh well, we will see, I guess I'm upset because I particularly want this position...

@scratchy thank you. That does make me feel a little better, you never think you are good enough!

I'm still waiting to hear either way 😤😤😫