Online application, then a group interview over teams. There were about 8 other candidates and first you went round introducing yourself and then HR went round each person with 2 surprise topics you had to choose to talk about for strictly 3 mins. No one knew what topic you would get. After that you get emailed a task where you have to write a memo for a meeting in 1 hr and email it back to HR. If successful they invite you to their Edinburgh office for a face to face interview and case study task. When you get the invite, you also have to do a personality and psychometric test. It produces a report to summarise your personality and work ethic based on the results. I found the questions to be repetitive but the end result in the report was completely inaccurate to how I am and how I intended to answer the questions. I feel it gave me a bad impression to the recruitment team. Speaking to other candidates, they felt the same. You were also not given a chance to explain yourself in the interview nor to challenge what the report said. The interview was with 2 partners and it was disappointing when they openly said that they hadn’t even read the applications (which candidates put a lot of time, thought and effort into) and the interview itself felt like an interrogation where it was strictly a question from them and you answer, no room for a chat or anything to get a feel for the firm itself. Also no opportunity was given for candidates to ask their own questions at the end of the interview. Based on the questions asked I felt they were more interested in candidates with sales experience rather than anything else and didn’t seem interested in getting to know you as a person. I feel like I didn’t get an opportunity to sell myself or my skills and instead they just wanted to see how I would make business as a trainee - which I understand is very much part of the job but i know its not the only thing that makes a good trainee (thats my impression anyway) The case study was straightforward- read a case and summarise the key points in a 15 min presentation in front of 2 partners

Applied using a fairly standard application form that was straight forward enough. Interview consisted of a partner and HR rep panel. Generally it was a discussion about my application form and what I could bring the firm. The HR Rep was nice enough but the partner was somewhat condescending and difficult - almost at times looking to trip me up, rather than engaging with my CV. I got the impression I wasn’t what the partner was looking for and so they didn’t bother trying to get to know me.