Interview exercise for event planner

[GwinGwyn]

Looking for some bright ideas - I work for a very small organisation and we are in the midst of a recruitment process. As we don't have HR I am doing all of the work myself, which is fine as the role reports into me, but it's not my area of expertise. I've spent most of today sorting out the shortlisting form, the invitation to interview and 'thanks but no thanks' letters, as well as the interview questions... so far, so good.

But my boss also wants us to set the shortlisted candidates a practical exercise in advance of the interview. I had to do one when I joined the company - it involved writing a particular plan and then taking them through it at interview. But I am struggling to come up with something that fits the bill for this post - closest approximation to the role is an event planner. I could ask them to write an event plan/checklist but these are easily googleable. My brain is tired and drawing a blank (I moved house yesterday so am exhausted!), so hoping that the hive mind might have some good suggestions? Cheers!

I think you can still offer an exercise around a project plan for an event as you would want more specific things than can be done with a generic checklist, or you could ask about, you're planning a new event about xxx, what would be your key considerations, how would you measure success etc?

Thank you that’s really helpful, I can definitely introduce a level of specificity to make it more of a practical challenge relating to the actual role.

You could then at interview throw a spanner into the mix - have a few scenarios that have happened, how would they adapt their plan and deal with it. Have they prethought and considered issues arising/happening, and how they would manage these to allow the event to happen smoothly?