As part of our AI in Careers series, this blog explains what an assessment centre in a job application involves and how AI can help you prepare for them
What an assessment centre involves
Assessment centres are a common part of recruitment for graduate schemes. There are variations but they tend to incorporate a few different types of assessments across the course of a whole day or half day. These commonly include:
- One to one or panel interviews
- Group tasks
- Individual tasks including written tasks, case studies, presentations, technical tasks and/or in-tray exercises
- Social and/or networking elements, such as an informal chat over coffee or a meal with current employees
- Aptitude tests
How can you use generative AI to help you prepare?
At its simplest, you could ask for general advice. The key to using Generative AI tools successfully is to have a clear specific prompt. When you’re looking for career support, it can be useful to prompt the AI tool to take on the role of a ‘career coach’
Remember if the first response you get doesn’t quite work, you can add more prompts to get closer to what you’re looking for.
Example prompt: “take on the role of a career coach and give me some advice about how I can prepare for my virtual assessment centre with xxx. I’m going to have [e.g. an interview, a group exercise and give a presentation as well as some short tests which I find out about on the day]”
If there are specific elements that you’re worried about, you can ask about those.
Example prompt: “I’m worried about what to do if someone talks a lot in the group task, and won’t let anyone else speak. How will I deal with that, especially in a video call? I don’t want to be unprofessional or have a confrontation in the middle of trying to make a good impression with the recruiter.”
Example prompt: “The bit I am most worried about is when we have a social chat over coffee with employees of the company. How can I make small talk when I am nervous? Can you suggest any open-ended questions or conversation starters I can use?”
The nature of generative AI means that it will always return slightly different results but when we tried these prompts, we generally received reassuring and common-sense suggestions.
However, one of the responses about managing dominant personalities suggested you ask the recruiter to intervene- not something that we would recommend! Always check the answers an AI tool gives you against other reliable sources of information like the employer’s own website or a trusted graduate careers site (e.g. https://www.prospects.ac.uk or https://www.careers.cam.ac.uk).
Managing your preparation time
AI tools can help you generate a schedule to fit assessment centre preparation alongside study and extra-curricular activities. There’s lots of guidance for creating study plans online, which can easily be adapted. You can also prompt AI Tools to ask c questions to work out what your priorities and commitments are.
Example prompt: “I will be attending an assessment centre [brief details] and I’m worried about how I will find time to prepare for it alongside my studies and sports commitments. Please could you ask me one question at a time to help me work out what I should prioritise in the time I have available and create a study schedule.”
Other developments to be aware of- aptitude tests
There’s the possibility of employers repeating testing from earlier in the recruitment process under controlled conditions, to ensure that candidates have not used AI tools in a way that would give them an unfair advantage or be contrary to the spirit of the assessment. This could include things like situational judgement tests, numerical tests or verbal reasoning tests, or repeating questions that have been asked in earlier video interviews. Ensure you’ve practised for these recently if this applies to you.
The one to one interview
We have a separate blog post on preparing for interviews with AI, which will help you prepare for one to one interviews
This blog focuses on using generative AI tools to help you prepare for an assessment centre. You can find general information about Succeeding Assessment Centres on our You Tube playlist.
