Hi all,I will be attending a Deloitte Assessment Day in the near future and was hoping that someone can provide a bit more insight into the essay component. Are the essay's marketing focussed in particular or very varied in topic?Also - do you present your case study or your essay to the interviewer? I am not clear as to which one needs to be presented.I would appreciate any thoughts!Thanks in advance.

I completed a deloitte assessment centre recently. I think the essay component was designed to see if you can write in a formal style appropriate to the audience. For example, in mine I was asked to write a report for a client company about deloitte's reccomendations that will be used to update the lower level managers An information pack was given out with some information in it and it was up to you what to put in. For example, you would miss out the part about how deloitte reccomended to sack half the managers and cut the other half's pay.It was recommended that you don't spend more than an hour on this. The majority of the time should be on the case study - this is presented to the partner.

Thanks for the information - that is very helpful.Do you have any other pointers for the rest of the day e.g. on the case study or the interviews?

Obviously, for the competency questions, have a few good answers lined up. (Look up the STAR method if you're not familiar with it already.) Don't neglect this part as I think it's crucial.For the case study I think it's important that you justify your points. I felt this was more important than actually hitting the right answer. Give your suggestion and your justification. The partner will always question your decision with the flipside of the argument, but it's important to stand firm, and give your reasons confidently rather than saying "yes, yes I suppose you're right...".As for the group exercise I think it depends on the kind of person you are. There are probably some dead cert ways of succeeding at this, but beyond the obvious, I don't know them.Finally, commercial awareness is very important and I think it would help if you had a preferred industry in mind and some knowledge of how that industry works to show how you could add to the knowledge pool of that area. I should stress that these are just my methods which although mostly sucessful have sometimes let me down! I'd be interested to hear any criticisms or other ideas.Otherwise good luck, at the very least it will be hugely beneficial practice.