The Student Room Group

Do employers filter out most candidates pre-assessment centre?

I've been invited to an assessment center after (presuming) doing OK/good on in the technical and SJT/ behavioral tests and also answering a few questions about why I want this particular role.

I'm just wondering if employers generally invite most applicants to these centers, or do they heavily select before? I'm trying to gauge whether or not it's worth going as the center is a considerable distance to where I currently live.
(edited 6 years ago)

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Original post by Blue_Cow
I've been invited to an assessment center after (presuming) doing OK/good on in the technical and SJT/ behavioral tests and also answering a few questions about why I want this particular role.

I'm just wondering if employers generally invite most applicants to these centers, or do they heavily select before? I'm trying to gauge whether or not it's worth going as the center is a considerable distance to where I currently live.


Yes, only small amount of candidates are usually selected to attend the assessment centre.
Absolutely. Most are filtered out up to that stage.

Nevertheless, there may be a few A/C’s
Original post by Blue_Cow
I've been invited to an assessment center after (presuming) doing OK/good on in the technical and SJT/ behavioral tests and also answering a few questions about why I want this particular role.

I'm just wondering if employers generally invite most applicants to these centers, or do they heavily select before? I'm trying to gauge whether or not it's worth going as the center is a considerable distance to where I currently live.


It's filtered out yes but bear in mind competition can still be very fierce.

One of the assessment centres I went to had 12 people there, I thought to myself oh at least 5-6 people will be chosen for the placement/internship. At the beginning of the talk when we got the company presentation the HR lady then said "we are looking to recruit 2 people only". I legit wanted to leave after she said that because I knew there was no way my chances would be good enough to get it with 12 people there already.

A 17% chance of getting one :rofl:
Reply 4
Original post by trapking
It's filtered out yes but bear in mind competition can still be very fierce.

One of the assessment centres I went to had 12 people there, I thought to myself oh at least 5-6 people will be chosen for the placement/internship. At the beginning of the talk when we got the company presentation the HR lady then said "we are looking to recruit 2 people only". I legit wanted to leave after she said that because I knew there was no way my chances would be good enough to get it with 12 people there already.

A 17% chance of getting one :rofl:


2 people -.-"

I'm starting to doubt whether or not the £70 travel costs (almost 8 hrs away) will be worth it...
Original post by Blue_Cow
2 people -.-"

I'm starting to doubt whether or not the £70 travel costs (almost 8 hrs away) will be worth it...


Definitely, the biggest tip I can give you (being from an engineering background myself) is to ask the employer how many candidates are they looking to recruit and how many people will attend the assessment day/centre. They will usually be open about it and tell you.

From that information you can then gauge whether it's worth going or not. I regretted going to the one where they were only looking to recruit 2 people, because it was a waste of my time + given some of the difficulty of these assessment centres it really pissed me off being there from 10am-5pm knowing I could have been home relaxing.
Reply 6
Original post by trapking
Definitely, the biggest tip I can give you (being from an engineering background myself) is to ask the employer how many candidates are they looking to recruit and how many people will attend the assessment day/centre. They will usually be open about it and tell you.

From that information you can then gauge whether it's worth going or not. I regretted going to the one where they were only looking to recruit 2 people, because it was a waste of my time + given some of the difficulty of these assessment centres it really pissed me off being there from 10am-5pm knowing I could have been home relaxing.


Thanks a lot for the advice!

I'd be a bit more than pissed off if I were in your situation back then... lol.
Original post by trapking


A 17% chance of getting one :rofl:


That's if they picked names out of a hat for the jobs :rofl: Your chances could've been better or worse depending on how you are as a person. You could have a room full of 10 people and one could be massively more qualified and thus more likely to get the job.

Best not to think of it in "if picked randomly, what are my chances?" mindset :tongue:
(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by Blue_Cow
Thanks a lot for the advice!

I'd be a bit more than pissed off if I were in your situation back then... lol.


Yeah I was pissed off but it was so funny because the assessment centre was actually quite difficult. They gave some weird tests we had never done before and it was hard. I knew f#k all about it (and I already knew after doing the first exercise that my chances were non existent at this point :lol: ) however to my surprise I wasn't the only one feeling this way and we all started laughing at how we all want to just go home :rofl:

I kept in contact with most the people there too and we all got rejected like flies... (only 1 Romanian girl from QUB uni got it).
Reply 9
It depends on the company but the majority only selects the "best" from the previous stages for the final stage. You get to the final stage and out of say 200 applicants there may only be about a handful who have made it. Of course, this number varies by company or the quality of the candidates.

For large corporations, there may be several assessment centres where candidates are allocated and distributed among those different slots. Most of the time there's just one assessment centre so that's essentially an all vs all kind of battle for only a limited number of spaces in the company.

Either way, competition will be tough but it's still always good to turn up unless you're sick or you genuinely hate the role. Assessment centres aren't really as daunting as they seem, I've been to a lot in my time finding a placement and most of them have been fun.
Original post by CTLevers
That's if they picked names out of a hat for the jobs :rofl: Your chances could've been better or worse depending on how you are as a person. You could have a room full of 10 people and one could be massively more qualified and thus more likely to get the job.

Best not to think of it in "if picked randomly, what are my chances?" mindset :tongue:


Well this wasn't my first assessment centre so I was quite experienced already and knew that it was going to be a waste of time.

I wish I had asked them earlier before I actually attended how many they wanted because if they told me that before hand I wouldn't have wasted £80 travelling there for a 10am start and 5pm finish. Some of these companies are a disgrace.
Original post by trapking

I wish I had asked them earlier before I actually attended how many they wanted because if they told me that before hand I wouldn't have wasted £80 travelling there for a 10am start and 5pm finish. Some of these companies are a disgrace.


Did you not feel you had a real chance of getting the job, even if there were only a small number e.g. 2 places going? Gotta be optimistic sometimes :s-smilie:
Original post by CTLevers
Did you not feel you had a real chance of getting the job, even if there were only a small number e.g. 2 places going? Gotta be optimistic sometimes :s-smilie:


You have to realise that the competition is so fierce that if you f*ck up 1 of the activities quite badly your chances are already severely hurt. Especially when they only want to recruit 2 people out of 12.

There was none of this "if you're a good personality/person to work with overall" bullsh*t. It's more like "did X candidate do fairly well in all of the tested competencies" if the answer is no you're rejected.

I once had a final round interview where I was asked about 15 interview questions testing different competencies. I didn't get the internship in the end and upon receiving feedback the guy literally said "you answered about 12 of the questions very well, the majority of your answers were very good but the last 3 interview questions on team based activities you were too general and said "we did this" rather than "I did this" focus more on what you contributed"

So basically I was rejected for not being specific enough on team questions but I answered the rest fine....something so little yet it gives them a reason to reject you. I was gutted :frown:
Original post by Blue_Cow
2 people -.-"

I'm starting to doubt whether or not the £70 travel costs (almost 8 hrs away) will be worth it...


Are they willing to reimburse any of your travel costs?
Reply 14
Original post by Smack
Are they willing to reimburse any of your travel costs?


Nope.
Original post by trapking
Definitely, the biggest tip I can give you (being from an engineering background myself) is to ask the employer how many candidates are they looking to recruit and how many people will attend the assessment day/centre. They will usually be open about it and tell you.

From that information you can then gauge whether it's worth going or not. I regretted going to the one where they were only looking to recruit 2 people, because it was a waste of my time given some of the difficulty of these assessment centres it really pissed me off being there from 10am-5pm knowing I could have been home relaxing.


This is terrible advice. It's a loser mentality and doesn't look good at all. You should be going to any interview/assessment centre confident in your abilities, not throwing in the towel and assuming the other guys are superior. Why bother applying in the first place? In the early stages you're competing against potentially hundreds of other candidates... You beat 99% of them then give up at the final hurdle?
(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by Student-95
This is terrible advice. It's a loser mentality and doesn't look good at all. You should be going to any interview/assessment centre confident in your abilities, not throwing in the towel and assuming the other guys are superior. Why bother applying in the first place? In the early stages you're competing against potentially hundreds of other candidates...


You've misunderstood my point. I'm just being a realist.

I'm not saying just throw the towel/give up every time you have an assessment centre BUT rather there are some assessment centres that are not worth going to for many reasons. For example, some employers don't even reimburse your travel and if you live far away (like I did) I had to pay lots of money to sleep overnight, travel almost 7 hours by train just to then be told the next day that they only want 2 people from 12....

I still did my best but I already knew from common sense that I wasn't going get it, had I known this earlier it would have saved me money. I'm just advising OP to be much more intelligent in his choices. It really hurts going to assessment centres, trying your best to be on time and everything else only to realise your chances where very slim in the beginning.
Original post by trapking

I still did my best but I already knew from common sense that I wasn't going get it.


Why is it common sense to assume you're inferior to the other candidates?
Original post by Student-95
Why is it common sense to assume you're inferior to the other candidates?


Do you know how companies actually assess assessment centres lol (this is a general overview specifics will differ with each company).

I know you've got a graduate offer but let me explain. You're given a series of tasks that are said to test a range of competencies that the company believes are "the right values" for their employees. Failing 1 or 2 tasks for whatever reason already hurts your chances because at the end of the assessment centre you're given scores each showing how you faired against the said competencies compared to the other people there.

IF the majority of the people did well in all of the tested competencies they are pushed to the top towards getting offers. The ones who performed the highest are given the offers first.The ones who failed to show a good "well roundness" so to speak get pushed all the way to the bottom and ultimately get rejected. The bigger the company the more rigorous and petty they become in their selection methods because the competition is so fierce.

Smaller companies are more willing to let some of the failed competencies slide (providing you didn't do terrible of course) and can take you just because they liked you as person. In other words they are a bit more flexible because they usually don't have the same number of candidates (as the big blue chips) competing for said roles.


Now back to your point, the actual assessment centre was tough and after I had done my technical interview and the tests I knew I didn't do so good in them. I was grilled in my technical interview and didn't know the answers to some of the questions (she had asked me stuff we learned in 2nd year at this point I was in 3rd year and I just forgot the specifics having not done it for a long time etc). but anyway having conversed with the other candidates it was clear my chances were already not looking so good. Did I stop trying my best? Absolutely not, but using your own common sense anyone could have told you that your chances are very very slim considering they only wanted to recruit 2 people. By the way out of the 12 people, only 1 person got the placement in the end and they ran another assessment centre to get the last one.

It was essentially like playing a lottery.
(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by trapking
Do you know how companies actually assess assessment centres lol (this is a general overview specifics will differ with each company).

I know you've got a graduate offer but let me explain. You're given a series of tasks that are said to test a range of competencies that the company believes are "the right values" for their employees. Failing 1 or 2 tasks for whatever reason already hurts your chances because at the end of the assessment centre you're given scores each showing how you faired against the said competencies compared to the other people there.

IF the majority of the people did well in all of the tested competencies they are pushed to the top towards getting offers. the ones who performed the highest are given the offers first The ones who failed to show a good "well roundness" so to speak get pushed all the way to the bottom and ultimately get rejected. The bigger the company the more rigorous and petty they become in their selection methods because the competition is so fierce.

Smaller companies are more willing to let some of the failed competencies slide (providing you didn't do terrible of course) and can take you just because they liked you as person. In other words they are a bit more flexible because they usually don't have the same number of candidates (as the big blue chips) competing for said roles.


Now back to your point, the actual assessment centre was tough and after I had done my technical interview and the tests I knew I didn't do so good in them. I was grilled in my technical interview and didn't know the answers to some of the questions (she had asked me stuff we learned in 2nd year at this point I was in 3rd year and I just forgot the specifics having not done it for a long time etc). but anyway having conversed with the other candidates it was clear my chances were already not looking so good. Did I stop trying my best? Absolutely not, but using your own common sense anyone could have told you that your chances are very very slim considering they only wanted to recruit 2 people. By the way out of the 12 people, only 1 person got the placement in the end and they ran another assessment centre to get the last one.

It was essentially like playing a lottery.


I would advise confidence training. A lack of confidence shows in interviews and if you don't believe in yourself, why should anyone else?

Your chances are only slim if you assume the other people are as good/better than you. If you believe you're better then your chances are good.

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