A quick and easy telephone interview got me through to the assessment centre in the London headquarters.
The day was structured roughly as:
Presentation about FDM and their training scheme.
A presentation exercise
Interview
Presentation
For the presentation exercise we were organised into teams of 3-4 and had to choose a newspaper article to give a short presentation on it. Total time was about 15 mins IRC.
The interview was competancy conducted by two people - one asking questions and the other taking notes, the one asking questions didn't seem very technically competent and looked as if she was faking interest or exagerating it. Half way through, the interviewer asking questions was called out of the room briefly - I took this oppurunity to quiz the note taker, who was not prepared to be asked questions. Not a professional experience.
Before arriving to interview, you are given a choice of three topics to present about. It was a relaxed environment, and quite easy to do.
Throughout the whole day, the unoccupied candidates were sat together where we were subjected to listening continuously to one of the sales consultants speaking about the importance of getting to work 1-2 hours early to demonstrate your commitment, and what amounted to a sales pitch as to why FDM was a good place to work.
"If you are here it probably means you couldn't get a job at the type of blue-chip companies we will place you in"
Regardless of the legitimacy of this statement, it is insulting - (I did in the end receive offers from such companies)
At the end we had to do a number of standard tests:
Technical,
Numeracy
Observation
Note taking
These were of a fairly basic level, with the main issue being the time constraint. No preparation necessary.