Are you really prepared for your assessment day?

So you’ve had a browse around the airline’s website and have polished your shoes. You’re ready for your assessment day, right?

WRONG!

There’s a lot riding on your performance and there is plenty you can do in advance to get it right. Here are a few ideas:

• Most applicants read the most obvious pages on the website but also check out latest press releases, any documents which have been released or look in archive sections. This will give you a much broader understanding of where the airline is at the moment and what its priorities are.
   
• Make a list of the personal characteristics the airline is looking for. You’ll find these in any recruitment information, such as the job advert, job description or person specification. It is helpful to know what sort of person the airline wants. For instance, you would approach an assessment task very differently if you knew the recruiters were looking for ‘competitiveness’ rather than ‘collaboration’. It’s a good idea to be informed.


• Think of plenty of ‘can you tell me about a time..’ type questions which you might be asked. These might cover your experiences of working in a team, overcoming challenges, adapting to new circumstances, dealing with tiredness or stress, maintaining a calm approach etc. Pick actual examples from your work or life experience which you can describe in detail to prove how suitable you are for the job.


• You may be able to use one experience to answer lots of different questions (i.e. your problem solving example may also show your team working skills and conscientiousness) but try not to use the same example more than once in your interview.


• In your current role think about how you do things, and spend time reflecting on whether you could have handled any problems better than you did. This will get you in the frame of mind to keep double checking and trying to improve how you perform at work, which will make you a better candidate for a new job.