Assessment Centres - Practice Makes Perfect?

Many students worry about what will happen in a job interview, but increasingly the key phase of the selection process for many UK companies is the Assessment Centre. Usually only offered to candidates who have passed the initial stages of selection, such as an online application form or a telephone interview, assessment centres are a longer event, typically lasting one or possibly more days.

Elements that tend to be included in an assessment centre are:

• Psychometric tests
• Group discussion exercises
• E-tray or in tray prioritisation exercises
• Business case studies
• Presentations
• In-depth interviews

Candidates are under fairly intense scrutiny and are often very aware of competing each other, which may lead to some rather unnatural behaviour. According to careers advisers, some of the phrases that indicate successful performance are:  speaking up (without being unduly dominant), taking a lead, "building" on the contributions of others, keeping an eye on time, analysing facts, facilitating, awareness of the 'big picture'. Much of this focus is on how people work together in teams so it may be worth studying something about group dynamics in business situations.

But nothing beats having a try! Many careers services are now offering practice sessions on Assessment Centres to students and the University of Cumbria is no exception. On 13th November, we plan to run two practice assessment centres in collaboration with Enterprise Rent-a-Car at our Lancaster campus (exact location to be confirmed).  Priority will be offered to students from the New Business School but a large number of places will be available, so watch your student globals at the start of next session.

If you can't wait until then, here are a couple of links to help you gen up on the subject of Assessment Centres:

http://www.diigo.com/user/uoccareers/assessment

http://www.prospects.ac.uk/interview_tips_assessment_centres.htm

Enjoy!

FAQ: Where can I get advice on which postgraduate course to study?

A good starting point is the Graduate Prospects website, which has a whole section on postgraduate study at prospects.ac.uk/postgraduate_study.htm  As well as general information about key things to consider and funding information, you can find detailed information on specific University Departments and a search facility so that you can look for postgraduate courses in the UK that may interest you.

At the University of Cumbria, campus libraries contain copies of postgraduate prospectuses sent to us by many Universities as well as hard copies of the Prospects Postgraduate Directory, Prospects Postgraduate Funding Guide and Prospects Postgrad UK (quarterly magazine).  Many public lending libraries will also hold copies of these publications.

You may also find some more specialised information about specific career or study areas.  For example, if you are looking for postgraduate teacher training courses www.gttr.ac.uk has full details about how to apply and an online application system.  Or if you are interested in Psychology courses, you can find details about the various options at www.bps.org.uk   These are just two examples.

It's important to consider your reasons for wanting to do postgraduate study and the relative importance of your eventual career choice.  A postgraduate course is by no means a ticket to a guaranteed job, so ask course tutors carefully about the destinations of previous students if career outcomes are important to you.

If you are looking at doing a postgraduate qualification by research rather than a taught degree, you will need to take the initiative in structuring and organising the research and choosing a supportive research tutor you feel you can work with can become almost as important as the choice of research topic.  There are also an increasing number of postgraduate courses taught by distance learning.

University of Cumbria students and graduates who want to discuss their postgraduate options in depth can feel free to contact us  by email

The Future of Careers Information

My discovery of Career Player (see today's ealier post) via Twitter has set me thinking a bit.

Although Career Player concentrates on a few main popular careers for graduates - Marketing, Banking, Advertising and Finance - could we be starting to see the introduction of whole careers libraries based on well-produced and informative videos?

There is already a similar product aimed at non-graduates called Careers Box. And, as a writer I'm noticing that Prospects are no longer commissioning many freelance careers updates and reducing the scope of the articles they offer, while jobs4U have currently suspended updates to the careers database for six months.

I wonder if everyone is taking breath before the next generation of careers information - databases of video information heavily sponsored by participating companies?

Is the old-style, publicly funded careers handout, even in its web format, about to die off completely?