Firstly a lengthy online application with several stages, multiple choice situations and personality assessment. Also had to fill out about 15 questions with 200-500 word answers. This took a number of hours.
Then invited to an assessment day. There were two at my centre and the one I attended there were 5/6 candidates, 5 assessors and 1 person running the day.
First have to do a group activity whilst being watched by the assessors, it was an unusual activity and quite hard...we all just seemed to be repeating each others ideas. They really emphasised how you needed to speak up otherwise they'd have nothing to mark you on.
That lasted around 45mins/1 hour and then we were all given an assessor who would interview us 1 on 1.
Bad organisation here as one candidate hadn't been expected and so there was not enough booklets/material and they had to wait extra time for someone to interview them.
The interview was all set questions asked from a booklet and wasn't very long maybe 5/6 questions, all situational. Not a very personal interview at all, felt like they weren't actually interested in getting to know you as an individual, more whether you could create a perfect example situation to fit their question.
My main annoyance with the whole day was that it was advertised as a scheme for college/sixth form leavers, yet when we attended one candidate was over 30 years old, one 25 and the rest of us between 17-20. Felt a little unfair to put college leavers against someone with over 10 years working experience, felt like no-one else had a chance in getting the job! Also the whole process was very long, nearly 5 months from initial application, and then after the assessment day up to a month to find out if you were successful!