I was already familiar with the Undergraduate of the Year
Awards before I had even considered applying, as I had used Target Jobs
throughout my time at university to look for placements and graduate
employment. Out of them all, the “Future Business Leader of the Year” was
easily the category where I felt myself best placed. I was studying
International Business and had previously worked in finance, procurement and
CSR. Yet, despite this, I had still spent some time deliberating whether I
should apply, especially looking at previous winners and their own backgrounds.
However, I was drawn to the FMCG focus of the application, as this was the
sector I had wanted to enter, and Mars being the sponsor company was naturally
extremely attractive. So, perhaps partly due to dissertation procrastination, I
decided to submit an application.
Everyone says it, but I really was genuinely surprised each
time I passed a stage of the application. The initial psychometric testing was
similar to those I was completing when applying for graduate jobs, so I was
really encouraged when I had passed this and motivated me to continue with the
application. Having saying that, the next stage involved a telephone interview
and was probably the stage I felt I had messed up the most! I had spent so much
time preparing generic interview questions that I was completely thrown by the
more informal, person-centred approach of the interview. I was probed on my CV
and specific experiences as opposed to the generic competency-based scenarios
which I was so used to, which made it harder for me to try and work out how
well or poorly I’d done. Looking back though, the interview was a good
indication of what was to come: an assessment centre designed to really
understand candidates further than simply what can be taken from a CV. This was
probably my favourite thing about the whole process; I felt like I had really
got to understand Mars (and also the other candidates in my category) and that
Mars had taken the time to understand us. When I think back to how I was
undecided about applying, I’ve learned that embracing having differences as
opposed to being intimidated by them really paid off.
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