Accounts Assistant job interview - 10 minute task?

Fuchs

I have a job interview on Thursday for an accounts assistant position (industry, not practice), which will be the first interview I have gotten from applying for jobs since completing my AAT level 4 (and the first accounts job interview at all). According to the confirmation email, it will consist of a 40 interview followed by a 10 minute task. There wasn't any detail about what the task would entail, and I feel might have left it a bit late since getting the confirmation last week to suddenly email again and ask what exactly the task will be about now.

I did well in my AAT course (I passed and didn't need any resits at least), but certain topic I haven't touched on much for a while and I am a bit worried that I will get to the task and draw a blank without prepping a bit beforehand, but that's a lot to cover when you have no idea where to start. I have had a look through past forum posts, which suggest it will possibly be either a numeracy test or using Excel to enter formulae (which isn't much of a problem if I can refresh my memory on things like Vlookup and pivot tables).

Since it's only 10 minutes it's obviously not going to be anything very intense and work/data-intensive, but since I have finally gotten an interview I'd like to make sure I do all I can to make the best impression. If anyone has more experience or examples of what tasks like this involve, I'd really like to hear them.

clees

I had to do some tasks for my most recent interview
it was public sector so might be slightly different but I cant see it being that different.

I had to preform basic calculations using excel regarding invoices (VAT, amounts left on to be paid ect) and gather information from a provided spread sheet.

good luck with your interview!!!

burg

We are a practice and we did some basic tasks in some recent interviews we held. We were not looking for perfection. It was a basic bank statement to analyse along with some background info to help. The idea was to see a few things:-
1 - how did they cope under pressure?
2 - what was their attitude to being stuck? Ask straight away? Struggle on for ages?
3 - What did or didn't they know?
4 - How quick were they?

It actually worked really well. It's hard to get applicants from other practices so we had many from industry. The issue with taking someone from industry is if they have only ever worked in one industry or even have spent a fair few years in a particular industry how will they cope with changing between clients in different industries?

The process above helped us in our selection process. It was not the deciding factor it was an additional tool used in our selection criteria. It certainly helped us rule out candidates that seemed ok.

My advice would be be confident as it is likely something not that challenging. If however you are unsure do not be afraid to ask. Someone who does not know something but is prepared to ask and learn is a far better employee than a person just willing to guess and see what happens.

Adele69

I saw a post today which has a similar requirement which is fair enough, though sometimes it's knowing the process which requires a bit of time, and there are lots of Excel function I very rarely use on a daily or even weekly which would eat into this time in an interview type scenario. Tricky.

http://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/12236/

Shortlisted candidates will be asked to complete an exercise to demonstrate their ability to manipulate data to create a report, and to understand and interpret funder and publisher policies.