1) Application - Fairly standard
2) Online Tests - Fairly straightforward, but the written assessment was different than others. Involved you reading a section and pointing out the grammatical/spelling errors and matching the correct email response to an example email.
3) Video Interview - 10 three minute recorded answers. Heavily strengths based, such as "After working with someone for 6 months, how do you think they would feel.". Not too bad as long as you try and use up the whole three minutes!
4) Assessment centre - 2 days long.
Day one is not assessed involves a presentation by one of the current Sigma members about the company, program and him/herself. Followed by drinks and dinner. Assessors the next day attend the dinner but you do not mix with them. You mix with the other candidates and other current Sigma members who arrive and tell you more about the program. Very good for networking, recommend staying with the Sigma members for a drink at the bar after, you learn a lot.
Day two is the full assessment centre.
Interview:
Strengths based interview. Standard questions, "Give me an example of a time when...". Was a frustrating interview as the assessors are not allowed to probe, i.e. they have to ask the candidates all exactly the same questions. Hence they read off a script and the interview can seem a little one sided. Then moved on to the technical side. Engineering and business questions differ in the interview.
From an engineering POV, they were not very technical in a sense of engineering theory i.e. no equations, or specific theory they wanted to know. Instead it was more a real-world application questions. There were three questions, and the assessors could probe slightly more in this part.
Written Exercise:
30 minutes long. You are given two A4 sheets of paper, one describing what your task is, the other giving you the context. In our example, we were given a document describing a new VR warfare helmet that had been developed. The document listed several facts, such as it was the first of its kind, etc. You then had to summarise why this project was so good so that your summary could be presented to the stakeholders. You had to demonstrate three key points in our summary, a) why the product was innovative, b) why the product demonstrated the company's continuous improvement and c) why the product was commercially viable. Then had 30 mins to write, and your arguments were analysed.
Presentation:
15 minutes to prepare, 10 minutes to present. You had to present how you were going to make your mark at BAE Systems. You were given an A4 piece of paper which described the task and outlined suggested points you should hit, which included 'Where will you see yourself in 3, 6 and 12 month’s time", "What values were important to you", "What you wanted out of the scheme/goals". You had to present to one person, who then questioned you off a script, with "What challenges do you think you would face that you would have to overcome to reach your goals" etc. A useful example we were told before was dealing with people who did not like your age/seniority combo.
Group exercise:
Hard. Involved looking at a theoretical company and improving its performance as per the brief it wasn't doing too well. The 45-minute exercise is split into 5/10 minute sections. An example is in a 10-minute period you get a new piece of information every 1 minute. Cannot stress enough how important it is to listen to the time you are given, we didn't realise at the start how much time we had and barely discussed anything in that time. Would strongly advise splitting up into pairs ASAP to streamline the discussion process. As part of my feedback they also said they wanted more challenge, i.e. challenge someone else’s point if you think it is wrong, but don't go too far and waste too much time. Ends with a 5-minute presentation to the assessors in the room.
