I applied for 30 graduate schemes, a mix of investment banks, high street banks, insurance companies and the civil service. I had a 2:1 in Economics and an MSc in Economics but no experience beside time spent working in Tescos.
I got rejected by 20 (mostly the investment banks who would barely look at me) and got interviews with 10, of those 10 I got to 6 assessment centres.
The whole process was pretty demoralising, I went from thinking I was going to walk into any job I wanted after university to getting rejected over and over, quite a harsh reality lesson for me especially some of the feedback I got. I'll type up my advice incase anyone is interested.
The key to the whole graduate recruitment process is to be organised early, you should spend the summer before your final year doing an internship and deciding what exactly you want to do, then as soon as September comes around you should make a list of all the skills and experiences you have and these can be related to the core competencies that employers are looking for. This kind of thing can be really simple, like how organising a five a side football team helped build your leadership and teamworking skills, so long as you can justify it use it. Start filling in your forms as soon as they open submissions, some big firms will be running numerous assessment centres throughout the year, the recruiter from PWC told me that he'd already offered employment for September 2007 in September 2006 and places were limited. In addition to applying early, apply to as many places as you can, a lot of the forms are similar and companies are expecting good candidates to apply to all their competitors.
With luck you should get through to the online numerical/verbal (occasionally psycometric) testing stage for each, these aren't very hard, mostly GCSE level maths working out percentages and ratios but the time limits can be tight to create "pressure". Companies aren't looking for you to get 99% which since you work in HR I'm sure you know, being good at maths isn't a guarantee of a good employee. These tests are basically designed to filter out the very worse candidates, so long as you get ~70% you should be fine, if you're tempted to cheat beware they're almost always tested again in person.
Next stage is usually a telephone competency based interview, they ask you a couple of basic questions about the company and their market conditions just to check you know what you're getting into. Then they ask you for
specific examples of when you've demonstrated the competencies they're looking for and what skills you have. They focus on things like group work, communication, innovation, organisation and dealing with customers. Try to use different examples for each but you do need to think a lot about these and what sort of skills they allowed you to develop.
Next comes the assessment centre, some are better organised than others but they usually consist of a group exercise, presentation exercise, analysis exercise and a number of interviews, there's also social settings and you are being assessed all day. You can't really practice many of the exercises but knowing the company and market inside out is a must, don't just be prepared to answer questions be prepared to talk about the market and job with assessors in the breaks, always be positive about
everything and make sure you're out going and sociable with everyone even really weird people. The problem with assessment centres is you can't really give much advice on how to win them you just need to go to a few to get a feel for what they're looking for. If you go in like Blue Moon, hung over and unprepared expect to fail, can't see why you'd moan after admitting that.
In terms of job passion Tomkat is totally right, with graduate recruitment schemes firms are trying to recruit their next generation of senior management, they invest a lot of time putting you through loads of managerial training they don't want some muppet who is going to quit in a year, they want someone who's going to want to stick around for a long time. One of the HR people at an insurance company was telling me her boss comes down on her like a ton of bricks when a graduate trainee leaves so they need to be sure you really want the role. Furball gave me some great advice, if the passion isn't there then fake it, make out it's the only thing you want to do. If you have other offers feel free to mention them in the interview but say you're holding out for them to give you one, if another company wants you they usually figure you're decent and will want you too.
If you pass the assessment centre you're likely to get another interview, this time with the managers from the business area/office that you're going to work in, it's about an hour and quite informal, I think they mostly use it just to check that you're not a dribbler and get on with the people where you're going to work. Despite what you seem to think they
will check or your documents either at this stage or at your offer stage, this goes right down to your GCSEs.
From my assessment centre stage I got four offers, two as an underwriter at top three UK insurance companies, a corporate banking job at a high street bank and as a Government Economist. I'm leading towards accepting one of the insurance jobs but I'm not really sure, underwriting seems like it would be good fun and have good prospects to move into senior management later on in my career but it would mean quite a big pay cut from what I currently make as an Economist for a lobbying group. Lots more thought needed.
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Originally Posted by -Blue Moon-
heh true, maybe they need energetic people so that the new grads can inject their depressing departments with a bit of energy or enthusiasm before the lifeless drole of the financial world kicks in and they realise they're stuck for the rest of their lives in a dull job with dull people, with only recurring 3s to keep them company....
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Considering you've worked in finance for three years and you're still applying to finance jobs what exactly does this say about you ?
