Dined in Hell... and came back to tell the Tale

Went through Hell on Tuesday with the HSBC Assessment Center. Cause they were gonna be in London for a few days, they had to squeeze the whole recruitment process into just one day. So for me, my day started at 9am and it ended at 8-ish. 11 hour assessment center, ownz everybody's faces hahaha!!

But it was a memorable experience for me as this was only my second assessment center, but a through assessment center. Not to say that Genting's one was any bad, but it kept you relaxed and being yourself. For HSBC's one, they really put you under constant pressure and deadlines to see if you can really handle the job.

I was lurking through lowyat's jobs and careers section and the Shell Recruitment Day thread caught my attention. It explained briefly what candidates went through in Shell's AC. I realized that the AC had huge similiarities with HSBC's one, so maybe one's explanation of an AC might be for all ACs. SO I'm writing down my experience in HSBC's AC for people who have ACs to pass and are curious to know what is done in an AC.

I did my first interview with the HR representative and Commercial Banking's representative. They were damn poker-faced with no emo, and started asking questions straightaway. I kept a cool composure (smile XD!) and answered their questions that came from all directions. Some of the questions were like ;

Why don't you want to go back and work in Citibank?
What did you learn in your internship?
Why choose HSBC rather than CIMB or StanChart who are also having recruitment drives here?
Playing computer games as a hobby? Thats interesting and honest. Can you tell us briefly why computer games?

For the last question, thanks to Thean for giving me the idea years ago XD. Somehow it impressed them.

I was then called back to do a presentation after the interview. This was supposed to be the 3rd stage of the recruiting process. They gave me 2 documents of about 40 pages each, go through them in an hours time and after that do a 20 minutes presentation. It was about a company wanting to submit a tender for an investment and we're supposed to say whether we should do it and why. It was also a role-playing sessions and u're required to roleplay the second you start the presentation, which I didn't know, hahaha.

After that presentation, I had to do a group discussion/conference with the other candidates. We took the time to build rapport amongst ourselves to work better in the conference. We were given the same scenario in the discussion and asked to discuss amongst a group for 40 minutes, write a draft proposal and send it to the boss. After that we had to do a questionnaire to evaluate ourselves and rank their contributions to the discussion.

And that was the end of Hell!! Offers were made on the spot too, so you could say that I was extremely fortunate to get one after what I thought wasn't a good enough performance from me. But nevertheless, it was a good experience for me and I was glad to have went through this so that I can better prepare for any future AC's XD