I've never found a good book review site that doesn't manage to give away half of the plot in its reviews. This one's pretty good becuase it's concise.

AXA Graduate Marketing Assessment day 2009 - 2010

It's been a few months since my graduate assessment day at AXA, but I wanted to post a little information and advice about it. This is because I found nothing online when I was up at midnight the night before, desperately searching out clues so I could find out what might happen. I did the Hotwire PR assessment day too but that's for a later day.

If you stumble on this because you have an assessment day coming up then drop me a comment.

First up I had the preliminary interview, which lasted an hour. I flew back in from Grand Cayman a couple of days before, so I was jetlagged. It was a competency-based interview, which meant you had to provide two examples of each situation they asked for.

Questions dealt with leadership, criticising someone, standing up for yourself, and a curveball: what I would do with my life if I could do anything? (Travel, forever).

I had some answers thought up before I went in there so it went okay.

A week later they told me I had passed, and the week after was the Graduate assessment day.

It started at 9am, and the wording of the email (the entire correspondance was in email) was deliberately vague. It mentioned a presentation, group exercise, role play and talks with previous graduates at AXA.

The email said the day would be wrapped up by 5pm. Formal businesswear was required.