Planning their next move. Apprentices from a major telecommunications company plan an overnight trip on foot and by canoe in the Lake District to scout out locations for a walking tours company.
Come on in the water’s lovely! In a steep mountain river in North Wales, a participant realises he may not have done his wetsuit all the way up.
We’ve just finished running a mock assessment centre for the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Nottingham. It’s aim was to give students a chance to experience what an assessment centre is like before they have to do so for real, and a chance to reflect on their performance in teams with feedback from peers and our Development Guides.
More than eighty students signed up for the day and spent it building contraptions that Heath Robinson would be proud of. Machines that sorted coins, threw table tennis balls and climbed ropes, along with a few puzzles, codes and a research paper. There were some extremely inventive solutions to some of the challenges but ultimately victory went to the team that was organised, managed their resources, knew when to give up on a project, used the strengths of team members and kept track of time. These are all the behaviours that major employers are looking for today.
It was such a success that the University in-house magazine ran an article on it and asked for our top tips for students who have to attend assessment centres. Here is our advice for those who find themselves applying for a job where a centre is part of the process.
Five Top Tips for Assessment Centres
We’ve been in North Wales all day, whittling sticks, chopping wood and building shelters as part of a stone soup bush craft session based at Boulder Adventures. Everybody has brought along ideas and we’ve shared them, improving practice and making all of us safer. Claire (above) seemed rather attached to her shelter and didn’t want to come out.
Rowdy from Inner Flame writes:
We are pleased to confirm that we will be holding our 3rd Invitation Day on January 9, 2010 at the Link Centre in West Swindon.
The aim is to enable people aged 14-19 to come along and try their hand at a free indoor rock climbing session, and to find out about our residential course, “Fire Me Up!”. There will be an opportunity to sign up for the next course on February 2010.
This will also include a presentation about Inner Flame and a chance to hear stories and experiences from previous participants from our past courses.
Numbers are strictly limited, so please contact us as soon as possible. To secure a place, you need to register by calling us on [redacted], or email me at info@innerflame.org.uk.
Thank you!
Inner Flame are a great charity (as well as being one of our clients). Their aim is
Their “Fire Me Up!” course is a challenging residential experience for people aged 14-18. It’s about achieving success by:
Having met some of the course participants, I can say that they have an extraordinary amount of success.
Totem would like to invite you to participate in our next Anything Could Happen course which will be running in September. It will be taking place in North Wales on either 11-13th September or 18-20th September. The cost is £280.
There is plenty of of information about the course at www.totemdevelopment.co.uk/anythingcouldhappen
In summary, it is an open outcome course with no fixed programme. We aim to draw together a diverse group of people, put them in beautiful surroundings, and provide challenging activities to create a powerful learning experience. It is aimed at people who are interested in their own personal development and who want to explore their own learning in an exciting and challenging environment.
Since we use Agile Programming, we can’t guarantee what you’ll be doing on the course but previously we have guided blindfolded partners; hunted foam animals scattered throughout the town; created art out of slate; abseiled and climbed; had round table debates; created codes and built a bridge across a lake.
We couple this with meaningful, engaging personal and group reflection and review to ensure that participants come away having learnt from everything they have done.
Some comments from previous participants:
“Thought provoking and loads of fun with plenty to take away to think about and hopefully apply!” -James
“A month of life packed into 48 hours!” -Eeva
“Thought-provoking; knackering but fun and challenging” -Billy
Mark also wrote a short piece about his time on the course, which you can read here.
The course fee includes all food and accommodation for the weekend, as well as the training, activities and any materials used. We will be based at the well equipped and friendly Bryn Du Mountain centre.
If you are interested in attending the course, please let us know which dates (11-13 or 18-20) you could attend and which one you prefer.
If you have any friends, colleagues or family who you think might be interested, please do not hesitate to forward this to them.
If you want to know more about this unusual course, please feel free to contact us.
On our Anything Could Happen course we ask the participants to recommend a book that they have read that changed the way they thought or behaved. The participants of ACH1 had the following suggestions. Read More
After our last Anything Can Happen course we asked Mark, one of the participants, to write about his experience on the course. Anything Could Happen is such an unusual course with such a different methodology that it can be difficult for people to see what it’s all about. We hoped that by getting one of the participants to tell their story, it might help others to see what they might get out of it.
He did a fantastic job of describing his experiences, which we’ve presented below. There is also a PDF available for download if you want to print it out and give it to someone who would be interested.
We don't change organisations, we change people. People change organisations.
