In December, I submitted my application for the Discover Technology graduate scheme. After a few days (so a lot more efficiently than other companies) I received a set of numeracy, logical thinking and verbal thinking tests (which were basically mini-games), and a link to a video interview where I could record my answers to a set of pre-recorded questions. The whole process was very smooth and even enjoyable. I received a first feedback within 15 minutes of finishing the video interview - which was impressive.
In February, I received the invitation to an assessment centre in Newbury, two weeks prior to the assessment day.
The day was very enjoyable, the staff appeared friendly; we were given the chance to speak to current graduates, have a tour of the campus, and ask as many questions as we wished to.
The first activity of the day was a group discussion - which I will talk about in a bit.
The second activity of the day was an individual interview. It lasted around one hour and it included four competency-based questions (how do you react under pressure / tell me about a time that you brought a positive change / tell me about a time that you gained approval from a team / tell me about a challenge that you went through and how you reacted), the interviewer showed interest in what I had to say.
The third activity was an individual presentation - I had to develop and present a 5g-based solution that Vodafone could implement. The assessor was also very friendly and was open to give me extensive feedback when I asked him to. A mistake I made in this part of the assessment is that I focused a lot on the strategic impact of the solution, while I could have focused more on the technological aspects of it (at the end of the day, it's a technology position).
All the information we had to analyse for the activities was available on tablets - however, we had the chance to take notes on paper if we wished to.
I received feedback on the results of the assessment within two days.
The group exercise was by far the most disappointing. My group, of four people, was asked to suggest a game-changing technology that Vodafone could adopt to increase its competitivity; we then had to prepare a group presentation.
We were observed by two assessors, who appeared extremely distracted for the entirety of the group discussion. They paid very little attention to how the group was working - which, for a moment, even got me thinking that maybe they were not interested in the discussion but only in the group presentation - which was not the case. It felt like they were present intermittently, like half of the time.
As a result, the feedback report that I was given described...things that I have no idea where they are coming from. I believe I did not black-out during or after the assessment centre and I am fairly aware of what I did, and I genuinely feel like their report of the group assessment was very inaccurate.
The feedback from different assessors, in the same report, was also contradictory: one line you read something, a few lines down, you read the opposite...And, those coming from the distracted assessors did not reflect me, or my actions / my responses / my working approach.
I cannot recall the last time, in my entire life, that I thought: "This is unfair" or "This bad result is not my fault" (because I clearly did not get the job).
This is genuinely the first time in many years that I think that if I had different assessors in the group exercise, the final result would have been dramatically different.
Hopefully, however, this will not discourage future applicants, as I do think that this situation was the exception, not the rule.
