Assessment centre written exercise tips

Preparing for your written exercise? Here’s all you need to know.

The written exercise can be an area that applicants struggle with at the assessment centre, and it can also be hard to know how to prepare. The information below is designed to support you with preparing for the written exercise. Please ensure you have read about our written exercise on the applicant portal. Assessment centre tips – Frontline – hopefully you may also find the below advice helpful.

In the written exercise you will be asked to take on the role of an Approach Social Work social worker who has recently joined a new team. Your colleague, who is going on leave for three weeks, has asked you to support two families that they have been working with. Your task is to review the information sent by your colleague and to write an email summarising the key points.

Time-keeping

• The exercise is time pressured, and we recommend you have a think about how to manage your time effectively before the day itself. You will have 40 minutes to complete the written task in total*, and the task requires you to read detailed case information before writing a response in accordance with the brief.

• The exercise will end at the exact time displayed on your schedule and you are responsible for ensuring your response is finished by then. Please ensure you keep a close eye on the time and use a timer.

* If you requested extra time, this will be increased by 25% to 50 minutes

Equal focus of time across the question

• All parts of the written exercise count towards your final score, so make sure you allocate enough time to respond to them evenly. We often see submissions that begin very detailed and then it appears the candidate has run out of time for the later questions!

Written communication, spelling and grammar

• Make sure you try to leave a few minutes to proof-read your response before submitting it! It’s important that the spelling and grammar are of a good standard, that the response makes sense and that it’s professionally written.

• Ensure you check the names of the family members are correct and you haven’t mixed them up between families

• Making assumptions or using a harsh or judgmental tone: it is important to approach the case information with curiosity and empathy and consider how it would feel for a person in one of the families to read. Avoid judgmental language or making fixed assumptions about what might be happening.

Your analysis of the information we provide

• There are clear child safety risks in each family’s case study – make sure you name them explicitly.

• You must clearly explain the reasoning behind decisions you are making rather than simply repeating the case information. For example, you are asked to prioritise one family over another, why are you doing this?

• Ensure your suggested next steps are detailed and relevant. The task can feel disjointed if there is a lack of rationale for next steps, or if you don’t fully address the risks and concerns outlined in the rest of the email.

• The more you write, the better chance you will have at demonstrating your analytical skills to the assessors! · We recommend you look at our example case study to get some practice with a similar scenario based exercise.

Remember to check out our applicant portal for information on the other exercises in the assessment centre – Assessment centre tips – Frontline

Good luck!