BBC Careers

As part of the recruitment process, as well as an interview, you may be asked to take part in additional recruitment activities, which may include:

Assessment exercises

The thought of completing an assessment exercise might be quite daunting, it’s an opportunity for you to demonstrate that you have the range of skills relevant to the job you have applied for.  

At an interview you can describe your approach to team working or decision making, for example, however in an exercise you can actually show us how well you work with other people or how you go about making decisions as you would on-the-job. 

Tips

• Familiarise yourself with the job-relevant competencies.  You will find these listed on the full job description
• Assessment exercises are not designed to trick, but are there to give you the best chance to show us what you're capable of.  To ensure this is the case you’ll be given a clear brief at the beginning of each exercise
• Listen carefully to the instructions and ask if there is any aspect you’re unsure of
• In any exercise we can only assess your contribution and not what you may have been thinking.  Get involved in group exercises and in a written exercise get all your ideas down on paper

Group Exercises

A group exercise is designed to assess how you perform when working with others.  In some group exercises you will be required to solve a problem as a group and in others, you may be required to negotiate your own objective. 

Tips

• Ignore that there are assessors in the room and focus on your team and the task
• Listen to and recognise the contributions of others
• Find the balance of knowing when to put your point across and when to compromise
• Think about involving quieter members in the group
• If you volunteer to scribe for your group make sure you also remain involved in the discussion

Role Plays

Role plays are designed to assess how you interact with someone face-to-face.  The person with whom you’ll be interacting will often be a trained actor or assessor. 

Tips

• Listen to role player’s point of view
• Ask questions to clarify his/her position
• Summarise your interpretation to check understanding
• Offer a range of solutions; provide the role player with options
• Find a compromise
• End the meeting by summarising again and agree next steps

Psychological Tests

Psychological tests and questionnaires are used to gain insight into how you perform on reasoning tasks or how you prefer to react in different situations.  At the BBC we use two main types of psychological tests at selection:

Ability or intelligence tests are used to gain insight into how you perform on reasoning tasks, such as numerical or verbal reasoning.

• There are right and wrong answers to these tests
• The tests are timed
• You are encouraged to work quickly and accurately

Personality Questionnaires are used to gain insight into your preferred style of working.  The questionnaires explore the way in which you typically react to, or deal with different situations and your responses allow predictions to be made concerning future behaviour.  This information provides valuable insight into how your personal preferences might impact on your performance at work.

• There are no right and wrong answers to these questionnaires
• The questionnaires are untimed
• There is no right or wrong personality and as such there is no ‘best’

The results of the psychological tests and questionnaires will not be used in isolation but will add to information gathered in other areas of the selection process.

Tips

• Practice for numerical reasoning tests by doing basic calculations such as percentages and ratios.  You can use information you come across everyday like prices in the shops, or information from the financial pages to test your numerical understanding and practise calculations
• Practice for verbal reasoning tests by doing crosswords
• When completing personality questionnaires always go with your gut reaction – do not try and “second guess” the test

Presentations

Presentation exercises allow you to demonstrate your ability to communicate clearly and influence other people.  The content of a presentation might also allow you to demonstrate your ability to analyse information, make decisions and develop creative solutions. You might be asked to prepare your presentation in advance or may prepare it on the day of your assessment. 

Tips

• Structure your presentation ·
• Use any available resources to help illustrate key points
• Make your talk engaging. If you’ve created slides don’t read the content of your slides to your audience but elaborate on your key points. Never read a slide verbatim
• Check for understanding from your audience
• Try to anticipate their questions