NHS Wales Management Graduate Training Scheme Interview Questions & Answers

After my initial online application, I had to complete 5 competency questions.
I then was contacted to say I had been successful and moved on to the online testing stage which was completing a Watson Glaser Critical Thinking test. After research, I found out that this test was most often used with law job applications and after a couple of practice tests online (I highly recommend this!), I was ready to sit the real one. It wasn't half as difficult as I thought it was going to be, my advice would be to not look too far into the scenarios and questions given, to remain calm and to write down any information they give you at the start.

I haven't had a one-to-one interview yet as that is in the second assessment centre.

The one-in-one interview is in the second assessment centre so I haven't been to that because I haven't found out if I was successful in the first one yet, but my advice for the day, especially for the group exercise is just to be vocal in your opinions, aswell as being understanding of the other people in the group, and always acknowledge their opinions and ensure that what is asked of you in the exercise is completed. Even if you are nervous, which I was, don't let that show and remember that this is the first time they are all meeting you so they will not have any preconceptions of you, just remain calm.

After completing the Watson Glaser Critical Thinking test, I found out I had made it to the third stage of the appplication - the first assessment centre. This assessment centre was made up of an in-tray written exercise and a group exercise. Although you don't have to do any prior research directly relating to the exercises, I recommend doing thorough research of the NHS in Wales, its structure, its core values and visions, and its history, just so you have a good basic understanding of the job and its background. Upon arriving at the assessment centre, I sat with the 8 other candidates who were there for about twenty minutes before being split into two groups. Our group were doing the group exercise first so were led into a room with 4 examiners. We were given a brief and a pack of emails, graphs and the like and were told that we were having a meeting regarding a certain healthcare problem for a fictional healthboard and we were to summarise the key points and problems to be tackled by looking through the material provided. This lasted around an hour. After this, we were left by ourselves for about half an hour, then asked to go into a another room where we were to complete the in-tray/written exercise on an individual computer. We were given a pack of around 20 pages of newspaper articles, statistics, graphs and emails and were to summarise the key points in a table of social, economic, political and technological value and then analyse them and put forward views to be discussed in a further meeting, all this fictional.