I applied in-person. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Safran (Pitstone, England) in Mar 2016
Interview
I met the graduate recruiter at a graduate event, she informed me a few months later of the graduate programme and invited me to do the video interview based on our conversations and my demonstrated interest in the company.
The interview was the standard competency questions and questions about your experience, questions on why Labinal and why the role, etc.
Got invited to an assessment day with 14 other graduates for various engineering roles, of which it was only one other for the quality role. Got a tour of the company, departmental tests, and our test for quality engineering was about fishbone diagrams. The manager explained it to us and then asked us to make one individually. Other candidates for mechanical engineering for example had to do a proper sit down written assessment.
We also had to do a paper based logical test. Group survival exercise with a scenario of being stuck in the rain forest and we had to decide what items to take with us out of a long list of options, we presented our results as a group. It was a really calm and fun assessment day felt very positive after that.
After the assessment day I got an email saying they were delighted to invite me to the final interview with the quality manager over skype. It was really calm, got positive feedback after each question (questions mentioned above). All in all I thought it went well but to my surprise I got an email saying I did very well at the assessment day and interview but I was just slightly behind the other candidate in terms of scoring and I did not perform very well in the logical reasoning test.
Scoring: Critical Reasoning – 18/40
Group Assessment – 17/20
Work Based Assessment - 8/10
I don't believe that I was rejected because of my score in the critical reasoning test because if this was the case I should not have been invited to the final interview and waste both our times. I had to respect their decision but I don't think they were completely honest with me about the reasons behind my rejection and the lack of integrity was a bit off putting.
All in all it was a good experience up until the end of the process. As an ambitious female engineer I did not feel like they answered my questions on equality, career progressions and workplace bias' sufficiently so maybe it was all for the best. I had read already on glassdoor that people don't progress in the company. They also recently had a merger or acquisition with a french company Saffran, and personally I did not feel that they clearly knew what their values where as a company.
Goodluck with your dealings with Labinal Power
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about an industry trend which you recently read about.
How have you dealt with a difficult situation.
Tell me about you/ your experiences... something along those lines